The ACBN Holiday Classics

It's like a Rankin/Bass compilation but with fewer creepy children

Scott Hines

16 Dec 2025 — 4 min read

This man is a monster and I know that but I needed a feature image

The holidays aren't a time for new material.

Can you imagine Mariah Carey coming out for the Rockefeller Center tree lighting and being like, "okay, first, I want to play a few things off my new album?" That's preposterous. I don't want that. You don't want that. Mariah Carey doesn't want that. She wants to sing "All I Want For Christmas Is You", bask in two minutes of well-earned adulation, pocket the sweepstakes-sized novelty check I assume she demands to be paid in, and then re-enter cryogenic stasis until the next year.

(It's a good gig, and we love that for her.)

No, this time of year is about old favorites. Hallmark might be churning out new movies by the dozen, but that's none of my business, frankly. I just did the math, and my five personal favorite Christmas movies are, on average, 52 years old. (Shout out to anyone who can crack that math problem.)

In accordance with this – and in recognition of the fact that my brain is a bowl of figgy pudding right now, incapable of generating quality new work prior to the holidays – I'd like to look back today on some of my favorite holiday-themed work from previous years of The Action Cookbook Newsletter.

"All of the Other Reindeer" (2021)

The thing that makes me most feel like a "real" writer is the fact that I hate 95% of what I write upon later re-read. That's not the case with this; it's my most popular holiday work, and something that I can actually re-read with genuine delight each year, too.

(Don't worry, I still end up feeling guilty about that later.)

If you haven't read it in the past, it's a New Yorker-style longform, delving into the "true" story of Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and what really happened on that "one foggy Christmas Eve".

"Meet the 28-Year-Old CEO Who's Disrupting Christmas" (2022)

We all love a glowing profile of a tech-world disruptor, don't we? Of course we do. They're doing great things for everyone and definitely not destroying everything we hold dear. That's certainly the case with Brantwell Hask, the youthful tycoon who's taken over Christmas in this piece that's been described on LinkedIn as "teaching me a lot about B2B sales":

"An Interview with the Grinch's Brother, Martin Grinch" (2023)

I'm back to the re-imagined classics well here, with a story that looks at a classic villain with a softer, more nuanced eye.

Hey, it worked for Wicked, right?

"Meet the Man Behind the Gifts" (2024)

Ever read an online guide to "Gifts for Him" and wonder who would actually want these things? Wonder no further, as I sit down for an interview with Himothy Husbandman, the person they made those Whiskey Bullets for.

Hey, but I've read all of those already!

First of all, thank you. Second, maybe you should re-read them?

Once that's done, though, you should probably start thinking about your holiday menu. You could make my family's most cherished holiday meal, Pastitsio: