John Lucas

Okay, let’s keep that retro stop-motion vibe going, this time with some local content from Mr. Christmas himself, Michael Bublé. (Well, local to me, anyway; Bublé was born in Burnaby, which borders on my beloved East Vancouver.)

As it turns out, Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” is the pivotal song in Bublé’s singing career. The story goes that no one in his family even knew he could sing until one fateful car trip when Bublé was 13. Or maybe he was 15; accounts vary. The point is, he began belting out “May your days be merry and bright…” and the rest , as they say, is history.

In 2011, Bublé released his first (and to date, only) Christmas album, the imaginatively titled Christmas. You’ve probably heard of it. We won’t get into specific sales figures (because who actually buys albums anymore?), but Christmas is one of the best-selling LPs of the 21st century and also one of the best-selling Christmas albums of all time. It perennially tops the Billboard Top Holiday Albums chart, and is in fact in the number-one spot on that list as I write these words.

Here’s the video for “White Christmas”, featuring all the classic Rankin/Bass elements, including a living snowperson and pointy-hatted elves assembling toys in Santa’s workshop. Here’s hoping they got paid extra for being in this video.

Fun fact! This was directed by Lior Molcho, who also made the Sia video I posted yesterday.