text: I was assaulted in a department store the other day. Not physically, thank goodness, but aurally, by the looped onslaught of inescapable holiday tunes. “The Christmas Song,” “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” “Jingle Bell Rock” … you know the drill.
  You will not hear “Jingle Bell Rock” in Jingle Bell Rocks! Mitchell Kezin’s new music documentary is about obscure and offbeat Christmas records, and the small subculture of people like him who obsessively hunt them down, notably former Def Jam executive Bill Adler and concert promoter Andy Cirzan, whose seasonal mixtapes are the stuff of legend among holiday-tune aficionados. Intertwined with these threads is Kezin’s own journey into the heart of Christmas music, which started at age 5 when, growing up in Vancouver with his father largely absent, he became fixated on the heartbreaking Nat King Cole B-side “The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot” (later covered memorably by singer-songwriter Erin Moran, aka A Girl Called Eddy).
  Tracking the evolution of Christmas songs from traditional sentiment into realms of humor, loss, social commentary, and plain weirdness, Kezin visits the creators or champions of a dozen alternative holiday classics, Continue reading