"We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket. It's run by a big Eastern syndicate, you know." —Lucy Van Pelt, A Charlie Brown Christmas

The day after Thanksgiving, the consumer Christmas season kicks off, guns blazing. Attempting to walk down the street to buy a stick of butter and a pumpkin eggnog latte will get your brain inundated with yuletide standards from the trying-to-get-some standard "Baby It's Cold Outside" to Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You." Rumors were circulating that she's trying to make a movie around it, with the writer from High School Musical. Good god. I wish that could happen for Jim Jones's A Dipset Xmas album. While it gets harder and harder with each passing day to reconcile the goonish (GOONIES!) Jones of old (BALLIN'!) with the current, short-haired Vamp Life dude from reality TV (CHRISSY!), before his VH1-sponsored Ed Hardyfication, he was rap's fad-lib king, the patron saint of weed carriers. A terrible Cam'ron associate ternt credible rapper in the Dipset era made me believe in miracles. (Incidentally, A Dipset Xmas is also one of the best documents you'll find of the late Stack Bundles's work.)

OCnotes has whipped up some dusted Xmas cheer with his new Food-$$-Booze-Xmas record, to be found at his Bandcamp. Entirely constructed from Xmas records, OC's Yule log pops and smokes in the hearth much like Otis himself, with jittery drums conjuring images of Christmas family-gathering anxiety. He describes it thus: "Funk. to the highest degree. Shout out to the architects before me, respect to the dons of the future. Im just playin my position. bump. respect."

Some of the architects before him include Vitamin D, Maneak B, and the Sta Hi Brothas—the makers of the last Seattle hiphop Xmas album, a classic of the genre: their high/horn-dogged 2011 album Chrismas Trees. One day, people will give Vita his props, not just for being the unquestionable heart of Seattle hiphop, but for being one of the game's illest MC/producer/DJs around—and that day can even be today, if you just pull your head out of your ass. And wouldn't that be a gift to the world! Joy, y'all, hella joy to you and yours—also, some shows:

Regularly scene-stealing rapper/singer Dice celebrates the release of her debut album, Reflections in Broken Glass, at Barboza on Thursday, December 20, with XP, Gift Uh Gab, Camila Recchio, WataBoy Music Group, and DJ Vitamin D. Nectar is having its End of the World Party on the 21st with Slow Dance and the MC Type. FYI, earlier this year they found an older Mayan calendar that goes beyond 2012, so you're reprieved. That same night, at the Showbox, brings us 2 Chainz—if they wanted the world to really end, they'd have had Type open for that one. Nacho Picasso—who owes the world a Christmas song, for sure—plays the Crocodile on the 22nd, with Sam Lachow, Gizzle McFly, Donte Peace, Raz Simone, and DJ Lovesick. Sunday the 23rd brings us a free hiphop show at Nectar with Juga Hill, Mack E, Brilliance, Lex Lingo, Mega EvErs, and Si Young.