Tag Archives: Christmas

Amusing Monday: Canadian retailer posts Christmas commercials

For many years, Canadian Tire Corporation, Canada’s largest retailer, has been providing amusing television commercials around Christmas, as well as at other times of year. This Christmas season is no exception, as the company has taken to the airwaves to promote a variety of products on a Christmas theme.

Who wouldn’t like a pasta-maker? How you serve the finished pasta is up to you, as you’ll see in the first video on this page.

Other videos in this year’s series:

Another Christmas series by Canadian Tire features the Eh Bee family. Check out “Eh Bee Falcon Flight School” in the second video player on this page. Other commercials can be launched from the page titled “The Eh Bee Family tackles Giftmas.”

Last Christmas, a commercial told the story of a young boy who was worrying that Santa would not be able to find him after his family moved to a new home. See the video in the third player on this page.

Canadian Tire, a 90-year-old company, has been featuring Christmas commercials since at least 1985, as you can see in the final video featuring Santa Claus and Ebenezer Scrooge talking together and pondering the price of a Commodore 128 or Commodore 64 computer.

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Amusing Monday: Water connections to Christmas

I’m on vacation this week, so I thought I’d offer the “Amusing Monday” from last year at this time. I posted the following on Dec. 24, 2012. It includes a Matt Damon video from the year before and some Christmas riddles from four years ago.
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Last year, actor Matt Damon dressed as Santa Claus and allowed children to tell him what they wanted for Christmas. All the while, he kept trying to convince them that what they really wanted was a stainless-steel or plastic water bottle.

I found the video amusing, but there is a serious message behind his charity, which is raising money to bring clean water to impoverished parts of the world.

After Matt Damon did this video, reporter Cathy Lynn Grossman of USA Today wrote about his effort and other charitable connections between water and Christmas. It was called “Charities give Christmas gift of water.”

In September of this year, Charlie Rose, the PBS interviewer, conducted an extended conversation with Matt Damon and Gary White, founders of Water.org, with offices in the U.S., India and Kenya.

A totally different connection between water and Christmas was provided by a bunch of water-sports enthusiasts who got together on the Potomac River on Christmas Eve last year to do their thing dressed as Santa, his reindeer and the Grinch. AFP provides the video on YouTube.

Some of you will enjoy this video of a dog who received an unusual Christmas gift. His owners piled up plastic water bottles to form a large triangle on the floor and let the dog go at it. In typical form, the energetic dog quickly demolished the structure and began chewing on one of the bottles.

As an added bonus, I’ve reprieved some silly Christmas riddles from a Water Ways entry posted three years ago. I hope they can bring you a smile. If you know a good Christmas riddle (a clean one, please) feel free to add it in the comment section below.

What do you get if Santa goes down the chimney when a fire is lit?
Crisp Kringle

What do you have in December that’s not in any other month?
The letter “D”

Where do snowmen go to dance?
A snow ball

What do you call people who are afraid of Santa Claus?
Claustrophobic

What do you call an old snowman?
Water!

Did Rudolph go to a regular school?
No, he was elf-taught

What do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire?
Frostbite!

Why was Santa’s little helper depressed?
He had low elf esteem

Why does Scrooge love all of the reindeer?
Because every buck is dear to him

What do you call Santa when he has no money?
Saint “Nickel”-less

What do you sing at a snowman’s birthday party?
Freeze a jolly good fellow!

What happened when the snowgirl broke up with the snowboy ?
She gave him the cold shoulder

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Amusing Monday: Water connections to Christmas

Last year, actor Matt Damon dressed as Santa Claus and allowed children to tell him what they wanted for Christmas. All the while, he kept trying to convince them that what they really wanted was a stainless-steel or plastic water bottle.

I found the video amusing, but there is a serious message behind his charity, which is raising money to bring clean water to impoverished parts of the world.

After Matt Damon did this video, reporter Cathy Lynn Grossman of USA Today wrote about his effort and other charitable connections between water and Christmas. It was called “Charities give Christmas gift of water.”

In September of this year, Charlie Rose, the PBS interviewer, conducted an extended conversation with Matt Damon and Gary White, founders of Water.org, with offices in the U.S., India and Kenya.

A totally different connection between water and Christmas was provided by a bunch of water-sports enthusiasts who got together on the Potomac River on Christmas Eve last year to do their thing dressed as Santa, his reindeer and the Grinch. AFP provides the video on YouTube.

Some of you will enjoy this video of a dog who received an unusual Christmas gift. His owners piled up plastic water bottles to form a large triangle on the floor and let the dog go at it. In typical form, the energetic dog quickly demolished the structure and began chewing on one of the bottles.

As an added bonus, I’ve reprieved some silly Christmas riddles from a Water Ways entry posted three years ago. I hope they can bring you a smile. If you know a good Christmas riddle (a clean one, please) feel free to add it in the comment section below.

What do you get if Santa goes down the chimney when a fire is lit?
Crisp Kringle

What do you have in December that’s not in any other month?
The letter “D”

Where do snowmen go to dance?
A snow ball

What do you call people who are afraid of Santa Claus?
Claustrophobic

What do you call an old snowman?
Water!

Did Rudolph go to a regular school?
No, he was elf-taught

What do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire?
Frostbite!

Why was Santa’s little helper depressed?
He had low elf esteem

Why does Scrooge love all of the reindeer?
Because every buck is dear to him

What do you call Santa when he has no money?
Saint “Nickel”-less

What do you sing at a snowman’s birthday party?
Freeze a jolly good fellow!

What happened when the snowgirl broke up with the snowboy ?
She gave him the cold shoulder

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Amusing Monday: Humor in nature and bottled water

Bottled water is inherently funny, and Jim Gaffigan comes to grips with the humorous elements like few people I have seen.

I keep trying to find comedians who can speak to water issues, but it’s hard to find funny people who don’t swear up a storm. There’s plenty of nasty stuff on this blog without polluting it with dirty words. At least some comedy shows — including the Daily Show with Jon Stewart — bleep out the dirty words before they post the videos.

Gaffigan takes the unusual approach of practically swearing off swearing altogether in his routines. Here’s what he said in an article in Straight magazine:

“I’ve always felt like when I have cursed in the past that it’s been kind of cheating. That’s not to say that dirty jokes aren’t funny. It’s just that I feel like it’s a bigger mountain to climb….I’ve always been like, I wouldn’t want to do a joke that would embarrass my mom. Like, there are Def [Comedy Jam] comics that are talking about eating p —-, then they’re like, ‘I love you, Mom!’ There’s this ironic twist there.”

Gaffigan’s take on Christmas and other holidays seems appropriate for this time of year.

Gaffigan has a kind of an indoors-outdoors thing going, and he calls himself “indoorsy” as opposed to his wife, who is always trying to drag him outdoors, or so he says. Check out his description of camping.

This comedian does not seem to understand nature at all, which comes out in his brief discussion of a male seahorse and his much longer expert analysis about whales.

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