Christmas Hall of Fame Prepares to Vote

Like so many things of Christmas we get our beginning with Thanksgiving. Starting on Thanksgiving Day 2019 we begin voting on the inaugural class of the Christmas Hall of Fame.

We hope this is the beginning of many years of recognizing the best of Christmas. We have talked about it online for as long as I can remember. It is time to finally make it happen.

Our goal is very simple: who and what do we recognize for making Christmas the wonderful thing that it is?

That is a huge question and it has many answers.

You are going to provide those answers.

After all, you are the ones who year after year celebrate Christmas and perpetuates its legends and meanings.

It might seem to some that we’re taking this a little slow. Christmas has been around for several thousands of years so can’t we just pick the low hanging fruit and call it good?

I do not think that is the way to go about it. We need to talk. We need to debate. We need to draw as many others in our conversations here as we possibly can. We need to get folks here to vote on what is being presented.

Next Thanksgiving day we will hear their voices for the first time. Next Thanksgiving day — and every Thanksgiving hereafter — we will induct those we vote on.

We started this effort more than a year ago by throwing out the question above. Nearly 5000 people were surveyed offline and online. They enthusiastically replied to the question. In fact, it was difficult to categorize their answers because they were all over the map. Christmas is huge. It has so many elements that folks love about it: people, songs, movies, television shows, books, and events. There are sub-sets of favorites when it comes to Christmas: food, decor, traditions, legends, myths.

From all those responses we skimmed the top 1% and limited it to ten. That is all we will be voting on come Thanksgiving day. While we vote on those ten seemingly obvious things we will as well compile a list of recommendations for the class of 2021. We believe we can get dozens of recommendations in just about every category we have identified. Please read the criteria for moving the Christmas Hall of Fame forward.

And then register and vote. Then get your friends to register and vote.

In the meantime we will work on expanding our reach: we will find more partners to publicize the effort. We will find more voices to help us shape what we are doing. And we will help as many Christmas enthusiasts as we can to get on board and speak their mind.

In this process we hope the world learns a lot more about Christmas — and about each other.