2024 Final Results

  And the winner of the 2024 Christmas Song Bracket Challenge is....


Silent Night!!


When I started doing this bracket challenge, one of my biggest worries was that the same song would win every year and it would get stale.  I can't tell you how much I love that we've done this four times and have yet to have the same winner twice.  

This year I was not in a great place mentally when it came time to do the grunt work needed to get things prepared.  I considered just letting the whole thing go.  But reading everyone's comments and seeing such great participation absolutely brought a smile to my face and helped me find some of the joy I had been missing.  Several people in the comments thanked me for doing the bracket again this year - but this wouldn't be what it is without you taking part and giving it life.  

I look forward to spending this time with you all again next year.  

I would be remiss to not include the following from one of our great commenters:

____

There is that often-told story about soldiers in WW1, who stopped shooting on Christmas Eve, and ended up playing soccer and sharing food across a hellscape battlefield. It makes a great Holiday-card moment. 

I have been a soldier.

I have been deployed on Christmas Eve. 

I have always held a bit of skepticism about this "Silent Night" story. For soldiers to stop shooting, and walk across a battlefield in peace, there would need to be a LOT of things fall into place. For example - many echelons of leadership would have to hold their tongues, tens or hundreds of active riflemen would have needed to be still. Not one soldier who was previously driven to make the "...other poor dumb bastard die for his country." would seize the opportunity. 

It all felt too good to me. 

There is no way this could have happened... 

Yet 

at the same time 

if there was ever a story that I wished to be true...

___


And I respond with this, from Terry Pratchett:

YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE.  HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?

____

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and may you all find a measure of peace, joy, and comfort - however, whenever, and wherever you can.

Comments

  1. Matthew SaundersDecember 29, 2024 at 9:51 AM

    Thanks for doing this again this year! It's good old simple and completely frivolous fun of the kind that we all need and that the world needs more of, especially at the holidays. I hope that you get out of it what we get out of it. There are always going to be good years and difficult years: sometimes life gives us Elf and sometimes life gives us Charlie Brown, but there is always awe, and wonder, and love to be found if we look and listen for it.

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