Bowie & Bing?

Or, how we learned to stop giggling and love this ’70s holiday mash-up of two legendary crooners.

Every year since YouTube went live another internet micro-generation has discovered this kitsch classic all over again. And while there’s plenty that’s weird about this uncanny pairing, this year we’d like to suggest a revisionist reading: instead of ironic distance, try it once with feeling. Embrace the strangeness of the setting, accept the choice of what might be one of Christmas’s most intolerable songs, and take some genuine pleasure in the unlikely conjunction of two of the last century’s great voices. If you can do that, the rest of this sometimes maddening holiday season should be a snap.

But if you simply can’t help yourself, check out Will Farrell and John C. Reilly’s redux.