Christmas Time

Fred Waring – Jingle Bells.

This rather wild old-time radio version of Jingle Bells has been playing on the radio for 73 years now. Fred Waring has to have been a lot of the inspiration for A Prairie Home Companion.

Cut Christmas Trees Sales

Christmas Trees sales are not the biggest agriculture commodity, but they contribute to the economy of many rural counties across the nation, especially in the northern climates that are more hospitable to growing the coniferous trees that are commonly produced as Christmas trees. Interestingly enough, part of Hawaii has farms that grow Christmas trees as a commodity. These are total sales for "Cut Christmas Trees" for counties with more then one farm that grow Christmas trees. Numbers from the 2012 Census of Agriculture.

Best selling Christmas Singles

Best selling Christmas Singles

Further evidence that Christmas music is pretty awful based on what people are parting with their hard-earned cash to download legally from the interwebs. Plus a fun exercise in webscrapping with Wikipedia to make a graph.

library(rvest)
library(tidyverse)

music <- read_html('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Christmas_singles_in_the_United_States')

table <- music %>% html_table()

table[[1]]$`Digital downloads`=as.numeric(gsub("(\[.*|,)","", table[[1]]$`Digital downloads`))
table[[1]]$`Artist` = gsub("\(.*","", table[[1]]$`Artist`)

ggplot(table[[1]], aes(x=table[[1]]$`Digital downloads`, y=reorder(paste(table[[1]]$Title,table[[1]]$Artist,sep="n"), -table[[1]]$`Digital downloads`),
                       fill=table[[1]]$Rank)
       ) + geom_col() + geom_label(aes(label=scales::comma(table[[1]]$`Digital downloads`)),hjust='right', size=6, fill='white', nudge_x = -20000) +
  scale_x_continuous(labels = scales::comma_format(scale=1/1000000, suffix='m'), expand=c(0,0), breaks=seq(0,3,0.5)*1000000) +
  scale_fill_gradient2(low='darkred', high='darkgreen', midpoint=mean(table[[1]]$Rank)) +
  labs(title = 'Best-selling Christmas singles',
       subtitle='',
       caption='Wikipedia/Nielsen SoundScan began trackingndigital download sales data at the end of June 2003. ',
       tag=paste('Andy Arthur,', format(Sys.Date(), format="%m/%-d/%y")),
       x='Digital Downloads',
       y='',
       fill = "", ) +
  theme_bw() +
  theme(
    text= element_text(family='Overpass',size=14),
    plot.title=element_text(hjust=0.5, face='bold',size=28),
    plot.background = element_rect(fill = "white", color="white"),
    plot.subtitle=element_text(hjust=0.5),
    plot.tag=element_text(size=10,hjust=0, color='#555555'),
    plot.caption=element_text(size=10, color='#555555'),
    plot.margin = unit(c(1,1,1,1), 'lines'),
    plot.tag.position = c(0.0,0.01),
    legend.position = 'None',
  )

ggsave(paste('/tmp/christmas.svg',sep=''), width=1920, height=1080, units='px', dpi=150, device = grDevices::svg)

Phil Ochs – No Christmas in Kentucky

"Let's drink a toast to congress and a toast to Santa Claus, and a toast to all the speeches that bring the loud applause, there's not enough to give, no, there's not enough to share, so, let's drown the sounds of sorrow with a hearty Christmas cheer ...

"No, they don't have Christmas in Kentucky, there's no holly on a West Virginia door, for the trees don't twinkle when you're hungry, and the jingle bells don't jingle when you're poor ...

"Have a merry, merry Christmas and a happy new year's day, for now's a time of plenty and plenty's here to stay, but if you knew what Christmas was, I think that you would find, that Christ is spending Christmas in the cold Kentucky mine."