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When planning a holiday playlist, Starland Vocal Bands suggestive Afternoon Delight probably shouldnt be included. Unfortunately, the Bluth family finds out the hard way when Michael and Maeby belt out the tune at the annual office Christmas party. In addition to the karaoke faux pas, the party becomes a sticky situation for G.O.B., who ends up firing the entire staff for laughing at him. The shenanigans, of course, eventually lead back to the banana stand, which ends up in pieces thanks to an under-the-influence Lucille. Available on Netflix

BOBS BURGERS, Christmas in the Car

The hit animated sitcom starring the Bay States own Eugene Mirman brought a bit of action to its Christmas episode in season four. Channeling Steven Spielbergs Duel, the Belcher family is run off the road by an angry truck shaped like a candy cane as they try to make their way home with a fresh tree on Christmas Eve. Hiding out in the snowy woods as they evade their festive stalker, they eventually come face-to-face with their puny pursuer, who ends up being harmless and helps them out of their holiday jam. Available on Hulu

FRASIER, Miracle On Third Or Fourth Street

The Boston bar patron turned Seattle radio host has played a part of a number of great holiday episodes across both Cheers and Frasier, but the Christmas episode from season one of the latter may be the most memorable and moving. After a fight with his dad and learning that his son wont be visiting him in Seattle this year, Dr. Crane decides to spend Christmas alone at the radio station, covering another hosts shift. Eventually, a bedraggled Frasier finds himself among humble diner patrons, who inspire him to get into the Christmas spirit with an unexpected act of generosity. Available on Peacock

FRIENDS, The One With Phoebes Dad

As every season of the sitcom has a dedicated holiday episode, its hard to pick just one to watch. There are so many fan-favorite moments, like learning the meaning of Hanukkah from the Holiday Armadillo and the iconic dance routine by Monica and Ross. However, season twos Christmas episode had a particularly touching storyline, as Phoebe attempts to track down her dad, who left her family when she was a baby. Joey and Chandler come along for the ride while she wrestles with the heartbreaking decision whether or not to go through with finally knocking on her estranged fathers door. Available on HBOMax

GROUNDED FOR LIFE, I Saw Daddy Hitting Santa Claus

As the head of a working-class, Irish-Catholic family struggling to keep three kids in private school, Sean (played by Harvard alum Donal Logue) isnt too happy when his father promises his son an overly expensive gift from Santa. This anger, coupled with sour memories of his father from Christmas past, eventually boils over at a community celebration, resulting in Sean getting a candy cane beatdown by Santas elves. This laugh-filled holiday episode also features uncle Eddie cracking quips about the Boston Tea Party as he surreptitiously acquires a last-minute Christmas tree for the family. Available on Peacock

HEY ARNOLD, Arnolds Christmas

Nickelodeons beloved animated comedy gave the world one of the most heartwarming and gut-wrenching Christmas specials in TV history. The episode centers around Mr. Hyunh, one of the many zany residents at Arnolds boarding house, who agonizes over the memory of giving away his baby daughter Mai as they fled amid the Vietnam War. Arnold makes it his holiday mission to reunite Mr. Hyunh with his long-lost daughter, relentlessly hounding a jaded city official to help find any information they can on Mai. Like all great Christmas stories, this one has a happy ending that will definitely bring a few tears to your eyes. Available on Hulu and Paramount+

SEINFELD, The Strike

Its a Festivus for the rest of us in this classic episode from Seinfelds final season. George unwillingly relives some childhood trauma after his dad gets inspired by Kramer to dust off the aluminum pole and celebrate his familys feisty, made-up holiday for sharing personal grievances. Meanwhile, Elaine plays phone tag to score a free sub, Kramer goes on strike against a bagel shop, while Jerry gets involved with a two-faced woman he met at a Hanukkah party hosted by his swinging dentist Tim Whatley, played by the hilarious Bryan Cranston. Available on Netflix

SCRUBS, My Own Personal Jesus

Things get a little personal in this Christmas episode from season one, as J.D. and Turk argue over faith after a near-dead patient miraculously wakes up. While Turk starts to question his beliefs following a rough Christmas Eve night on call, J.D. incurs the wrath of Dr. Cox after he fails to record the birth of a friends baby. The episode also features several of J.D.s trademarked fantasy daydreams, including a hilarious reimaging of Dr. Cox as the Grinch, as well as a rousing gospel number with Turk leading the hospital staff as a singing preacher. Available on Amazon Prime Video and Hulu

THE FRESH PRINCE OF BEL-AIR, Christmas Show

All of the aunties and uncles from Bel-Air and beyond reunite for a fun ski trip in Utah, but things quickly get out of hand for the Banks family. While the grown-ups go out for a night of dancing and laughs at the resort lounge, a robber pulls a Grinch on Will, Carlon, and the rest of the kids, tying them up with lights before stealing their Christmas tree and presents. Despite the loss, the family shares a heartfelt moment in the end as they learn about Janices pregnancy and celebrate the true meaning of the holiday season: each other. Available on HBOMax

THE OFFICE, Dwight Christmas

From Benihana feasts and Moroccan-themed soirees to messy Secret Santas and classy Christmas parties, The Office always goes all out for the holidays. But while there are many great episodes to choose from, the most underrated may be from the shows ninth and final season. Dwight takes over the festivities and plans a Pennsylvania Dutchthemed Christmas, complete with tasty rabbit stew, mulled wine, and lots of German folklore. Memorably, Dwight dresses up as the Belsnickel, a mischievous Santa-like character, doling out punishments to the impish and gifts to the admirable. Available on Peacock

Matt Juul is a writer based in Boston. Follow him on Twitter @RunTheJuuls.

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10 hilarious and heartwarming classic Christmas episodes to stream this week - The Boston Globe

Opinion writers examine these covid issues.

Bloomberg:Will Boris Johnson's Omicron Booster Race Be Enough To Stave Off The Surge?No one should be in any doubt: There is a tidal wave of omicron coming, and Im afraid it is now clear that two doses of vaccine are simply not enough, Boris Johnson said in a statement Sunday night. The Prime Ministers warning tallies with modeling by researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine predicts between around 25,000and 75,000 deaths from the new variant this winter in Britain. On Sunday, Johnsonannounced a plan to super-charge the countrys booster program so that everyone over 18 will be offered a third shot before the end of the year. (Therese Raphael and Sam Fazeli, 12/13)

The New York Times:A Scientist's Guide To Understanding OmicronOver the coming days and weeks, scientists from around the world will be sharing early information about the new Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2. We are two researchers who study the evolution of viruses, and we will be keeping a close eye on the data as it becomes public. This new research will range from laboratory studies investigating how the virus interacts with antibodies to observations of patient outcomes to large-scale data on infections and hospitalizations. The data will try to answer three key questions, all of which are important to understanding the risk of Omicron. (Jesse Bloom and Sarah Cobey, 12/12)

The Star Tribune:Minnesotan Boosts Omicron TrackersMinnesota's disease detectives are among the world's best. But the recent rapid detection of the COVID-19 omicron variant in the state illustrates the public's crucial contributing role in confirming pathogens' arrival and spread. Peter McGinn, 30, of Minneapolis, became one of the first people known to be infected with omicron in the United States. McGinn, who was vaccinated, has thankfully only had a "super mild" infection, he said in an interview this week, and was only briefly "out of commission." (12/10)

Dallas Morning News:In Refusing The COVID Vaccine, Some Americans Conflate Freedom With LicentiousnessCoronavirus and our response as a society have once again revealed an America not as completely at ease with science as we would care to admit. What a paradox. The only nation to send men to the moon and to build destructive weapons unparalleled in history finds itself torn over using accumulated knowledge to fight a microscopic virus it can neither kill nor contain. (John McCaa, 12/12)

Kansas City Star:Blue Valley, Olathe Schools Relaxed COVID Mask Mandates Now?COVID-19 cases are going up and masks are coming down in Kansas City. Ending school mask mandates right now makes zero sense unless officials are making political rather than public health decisions which they are. Olathe and Blue Valley districts foolishly removed mask mandates in secondary schools right after Thanksgiving family gatherings. As couldve easily been predicted, the Kansas City Health Department reports a 90% spike in cases, from 714 to 1,357 in the week after the holiday. Those Olathe and Blue Valley mandates also expired at a time when the positivity rate in Johnson County has soared to 11.4%. Not surprisingly, Olathe schools saw a record 184 new cases, while Blue Valley recorded 108. (12/10)

The Atlantic:Where I Live, No One Cares About COVIDI am old enough to remember the good old days when holiday-advice pieces were all variations on How to Talk to Your Tea Party Uncle About Obamacare. As Christmas approaches, we can look forward to more of this sort of thing, with the meta-ethical speculation advanced to an impossibly baroque stage of development. Is it okay for our 2-year-old son to hug Grandma at a Christmas party if she received her booster only a few days ago? Should the toddler wear a mask except when he is slopping mashed potatoes all over his booster seat? Our oldest finally attended her first (masked) sleepover with other fully vaccinated 10-year-olds, but one of them had a sibling test positive at day care. Should she stay home or wear a face shield? What about Omicron? (Matthew Walther, 12/13)

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Different Takes: How Many Boosters Will We Need?; What We Know About Omicron - Kaiser Health News

Speaking of politicizing disease, this is one godawful paragraph to read. From the Washington Post:

Seeking to deny Democrats a talking point.

Thats the best they have? Dont help 7 million diabetics so the Democrats wont be able to make commercials about it? Im supposed to write about politics, but this isnt politics. This is something beyond politics. This is ideological sadism, as pointless as it is cruel.

Cowards. Afraid of their own best instincts. And their donors. And their lunatic base.

Ive been developing a theory that, just as the Republicans lost their minds over economics when they went whole hog after what Poppy Bush called the voodoo economics of supply-side, they lost their minds on public health during the fight against the Affordable Care Act. They got behind so much utter nonsensedeath panels, Obama is Witch Doctor Hitler, the whole Tea Party bag of horrorsthat they never found their way back to whatever the Sensible Center used to be when Republican Senator Jacob Javits proposed what amounted to Medicare For All back in 1970. (Let alone back to where Otto von Bismarck and Thomas Paine, two advocates of universal health care, were in their own time.) That has left them with such an inflexible political posture on the issue of healthcare that they are locked into positions that seem positively inhumane.

Of course, the Democrats are fighting among themselves about how good the Biden plan really is, and over what it doesnt do, rather than what it might.

Its all that they have left.

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Democrats' Plan to Lower Insulin Costs Faces GOP Opposition in Build Back Better - Esquire

In a world without a global pandemic, students in "AMST 250: U.S. Travel and Tourism" would spend the semester studying the history and development of tourism in the classroom while going out and observing those dynamics for themselves at Bostons tourist sites. Due to the remote nature of the course this semester, students have had the unique opportunity of having the tourism dynamic brought to them over Zoom, as seven guests from popular tourist sites in the Boston area came to class in order to be interviewed by students for their Boston Tourism Project at the end of the semester.

Taught by American Studies professor Bonnie Miller, this class exists as part of a cohort of courses funded by the Mellon Foundation aimed at demonstrating to students how humanities courses can train them for productive careers. This was demonstrated in the wide range of roles represented by the professionals who came to share about their experiences in the tourism field. The guest speakers included Kristin Peszka, Interpretation and Guest Services Director for the Paul Revere House; Evan OBrien, Creative Manager of the Boston Tea Party and Ship Museum; Donna Curtin, Executive Director of the Pilgrim Society and Pilgrim Hall Museum; Michael Maler, Site Manager of three properties, including the Otis House, for Historic New England; Bethany Dorau, Regional Site Manager of 11 sites, including the Spencer-Peirce Little Farm, also for Historic New England; Molly Phelps, Academic Programs Manager at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; and Matt Wilding, Director of Visitor Experience at the Old State House and the Old South Meeting House.

Students completed their projects by meeting in small groups to plan interview questions for one of the seven guests. These guests presented to their assigned group about their own job experience as well as the history and goals for their tourist site. Then, students asked their questions, including how they chose their career path, highlights of the site, who their target demographics were, what challenged they have faced, and how the pandemic has affected their institutions. After the interviews, students worked in groups to design group presentations on their site based on their research and the information they learned from their assigned speaker to give to the class as a whole.

A highlight from the presentations was the way that each tourism site caters its appeal to particular audiences. Historic sites like the Paul Revere House gain most of their visitors from school field trips and international tourists, and theyve been able to appeal to that audience by creating resources for teachers along with a blog and radio show about the house. Students noted that visitors often are not the locals who live in the North End of Boston. In contrast, Maler noted that the visitors to the Otis House are primarily locals from the West End of Boston, as the site is lesser known. This provides them with a unique opportunity to make the house an experience the local community will want to visit repeatedly. Another site concerned with local visitors is the Spencer-Peirce Little Farm, as students explained that one of the most exciting aspects of the site is the ways they have been able to partner with local organizations and nonprofits to provide after-school volunteer work for kids on the farm and host events for the community. This discussion relates to one of the course objectives of helping students develop an ethnographic understanding of tourisms relationship to both people and place.

A factor in the audience discussion was how the last year of COVID-19 has affected the tourism industry and shaped the future of these sites. Places like the Paul Revere House and the Boston Tea Party Ship and Museum have suffered greatly from the lack of visitors, with the latter shutting down twice and laying off 25 percent of employees for a time. Similarly, the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Mass. was only open for six weeks in 2020 and has faced related funding issues from the lack of visitors. Many of these sites have turned to virtual options as an alternative to in-person visits, with updated websites and new ideas for how to use their space to appeal to visitors in a post-pandemic world.

This assignment also gave students the opportunity to see tourism as a multi-faceted career option. As OBrien explained to students, he was a theatre major in college with a passion for performance and only realized his love for history after graduating. In his work at The Boston Tea Party and Ship Museum, hes able to merge a love for history and the performing arts in a place that ends up being a stepping stone for other performers to begin their career. At the Pilgrim Hall Museum, Curtins job includes everything from finances, to development, to the presentation of the exhibits due to the nature of it being a small operation. As Professor Miller noted, having to be a jack of all trades can be a positive and interesting aspect of a career in the tourism industry.

Interviewing these practitioners gave students the opportunity to engage directly with these professionals in the Boston tourist and museum culture scene in order to learn about this potential job pathway. With this, they got a behind-the-scenes look at what the work of public history, culture and the arts is all about. Through this exciting project and the class as a whole, students have gained a deeper understanding of the history of tourism and its cultural, social, ethical and economic dynamics, as well as the possibilities and challenges of the labor of conveying Humanities content to the general public.

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UMass Boston students bring Boston's tourist sites to the classroom - The Mass Media

Im sorry so many people chose to stay home Tuesday night when they could have been learning something important at the Eastern NC Tea Party meeting.

The speakers were Dexter Liu and Winston Liu (no relation). Dexter is of Chinese heritage whose father was a Taiwanese Naval Attache to Washington, D.C., and Winston was a victim of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), being imprisoned and tortured for three years. Fortunately, he escaped to Canada then to the U.S.

Dexter spoke about the origins of the CCP, a radical Marxist/communist party which began when the Russian Bolsheviks infiltrated China and ended the Qing dynasty. He explained that the radical Marxist/communist mission of the CCP hasnt changed; in fact, with the weak Biden administration, it is becoming emboldened.

Winston, who grew up and experienced firsthand the evil and brutality that is at the heart of the radical CCP, shared his belief that Chinese Marxist/communist forces are currently at work in this county and that it is more serious than any of us could imagine.

Both men shared their unique insights and perspectives on what is happening here in the U.S. These immigrants, for whom the reality of oppression and lack of freedom is clear in their memory, came to America not to undermine our values, but to embrace them. But they are seeing the same oppressive policies being instituted here and they are concerned.

They recognize what they hoped they would never have to see here in America.

Many people value their freedom and keep informed so they can defend it. Others will finally appreciate it only after they eventually lose it.

The Tea Party meets the first Tuesday of every month, at 5:30-6 p.m. at Parkers Barbecue, 3109 S. Memorial Drive. Come out and learn with us! Vive la libert

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Letter: Speakers offer insight into China, trends in the U.S. - Greenville Daily Reflector