Happy Holidays, everyone! No matter what your religious affiliation (or lack thereof), international location, or what have you, we send you the very best wishes for a lovely holiday season.

Over the past few days, I've spent an inordinately large amount of time shuttling between The Castle (In Brooklyn, In Which We Reside -- thank you, Beastie Boys) and J&R Computer/Music World in Lower Manhattan. My trusty clunky desktop computer Bryan (yes, as in Bryan Ferry. No. Really.) finally just kind of fell apart. It was one of those systems I built myself out of cardboard and string and rubberbands. So, I had to take the leap and buy a new computer for the first time in like, 10 years. I did that whole switcheroo thing and got a Mac. Not a fancy one or anything, but it's totally adorable and I really love it already.

As a result of all this melodrama, we'll be introducing the Rich Girls Are Weeping Capital Campaign (tm) sometime next week. Just a little fundraiser to help defray the costs of keeping your very favorite music blog (we are your very favorite music blog, right?) going for another year. For yes, during our unfortunate downtime, TRGAW one-year anniversary passed unremarked upon. Thanks for your support over the past year, dear readers. We really appreciate you.

And so, to celebrate our anniversary and the holidays, here's a rerun of last year's popular selections (sorry -- I'm currently in the process of consolidating my entire mp3 collection on one external hard drive, so I can't access anything therein right now). These are some of my favorite holiday (and holiday-related) songs, and it's my pleasure to share them with you again. (Because we just couldn't bear to post something from the new Hall and Oates Christmas album that's incessantly advertised on VH1 Classics, even in jest...)

Best wishes from us to you and the people you care about. Have a lovely weekend, and we'll be back full-time starting Tuesday and our picks best of 2006. Promise.

First, a few covers of nouveaux classics:

Stars -- Fairytale of New York.

Neko Case -- Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis.


...and some heartbreakingly bittersweet ones:

Okkervil River -- Listening to Otis Redding at Home During Christmas.

Dolly Parton (with Kenny Rogers) -- Hard Candy Christmas

...and some silly, saucy, and totally sweet (respectively) twists on old favorites:

Alan Cumming and Liza Minnelli -- Baby It's Cold Outside. (This popped up on my iPod on the train today, and I knew I had to repost it.)

Girls Aloud -- White Christmas.

Cocteau Twins -- Frosty the Snowman

...can't do without this one, especially as we won't be with our respective families for the holidays this year:

Elvis Costello & The Chieftains -- The St. Stephen's Day Murders.

...and, as I mentioned last year, what's Christmas without some handbells?

St. Wulfrum's Handbell Ringers -- Good King Wenceslas

(Other recent developments -- we were sad to learn that the legendary Beat Street records closed earlier this year, we were looking forward to saying that it was our neighborhood record store...)