Help me out with my Christmas trivia book, please

I’m writing a book for a company that publishes a line of trivia books under the “Most Wanted” name – Baseball’s Most Wanted, Boxing’s Most Wanted, Country Music’s Most Wanted. The series started out as sports only but has branched out to entertainment (also Rock and Roll, Hollywood, TV), and now locations (Chicago, Ireland, San Fran).

The format of the book is a series of top-ten lists, but not like Letterman. Each entry fits into the category and has a paragraph or two of explanation behind it. Top ten World Series pitching performances. Ten boxers who were also musicians. Ten country music tequila songs. Stuff like that.

The books are 45-60K words, between 40-60 lists in each book. A thousand words for each list on average, maybe a little more. My main concerns are coming up with enough lists that would have ten entries in them, and then filling out those lists

Right now I have 46 potential lists, but haven’t fleshed out all ten entries in each list and there are some that may be questionable if I’ll be able to. I’ve written 17 or so lists, about 23K words already, so I’m on a good pace if I can flesh out most of the rest of the lists with enough entries and come up with more lists as well. At the pace I’m on I won’t need all the below lists, but it’s a lot easier to have LOTS of lists to choose which ones to use from.

I was hoping to get some feedback and even ideas from people here. My first question would be – what lists do you think would work in such a book? I’ve listed the basic lists below, with an asterisk on the ones I’ve written already and a # next to lists I’m struggling to find information on or enough entries for. I’m looking for either more lists where I can get ten entries, or specific entries to help fill out the lists with a #. The series is kind of light-hearted, so weird and offbeat lists are more than welcome. They just have to be things I can write a paragraph or two on each entrie. Let me know what you think! Oh, and yes I’d mention The SDMB in the acknowledgments. lol.

Christmas’s Most Wanted

1 Famous Reindeer*
2 Names for Santa
3 Songs that don’t say “Christmas”
4 Colorful songs
5 Classic cartoons*
6 People Born on Christmas*
7 Not-so-classic Christmas cartoons*
8 A very special Blossom (TV shows with a “special” Christmas episode)
9 Pop Christmas
10 Classic Christmas songs
11 Classic Christmas Movies*
12 Versions of A Christmas Carol *
13 Christmas Comedy movies*
14 Bad Christmas Movies*
15 Christmas traditions in the US
16 Christmas traditions around the world #
17 Wacky Christmas events
18 Christmas bad guys
19 Why Do We … ? (explanations of why we do certain things like we do)*
20 Christmas Tree*
21 Other things to celebrate*
22 Offbeat Classic Cartoon songs
23 Historical events on Christmas*
24 Bad Christmas Songs
25 Christmas Firsts*
26 Christmas museums
27 Christmas humor songs
28 Separating Church and State
29 Geographic Christmas (places named after Christmas)
30 Hello Neighbor! (things you’d see at the North Pole) #
31 Christmas Fads/Hot toys #
32 Other Famous Elves
33 Christmas Albums - Rock
34 Christmas Albums - Country
35 Christmas Albums - weird/unexpected
36 Who Were They?
37 Reindeer Facts*
38 Christmas Food *
39 People who died on Christmas*
40 Christmas Drinks #
41 Sports on Christmas #
42 Christmas in war
43 Memorable SNL holiday skits #
44 Cost/places to buy 12 days of Christmas items
45 Best secondary Christmas cartoon characters*
46 Best secondary Christmas live movie characters (eg, Carol Kane in Scrooged, the bully in A Christmas Story – people who weren’t the stars, but made an impression in the movie) #

Hi!

We kind of have a little rule around here about how we don’t do your homework for you.

I’m pretty sure that would apply to doing your actual work. If you are going to publish this are you going to give The Straight Dope and the Chicago Reader credit?

But if you want to read an interesting book on Christmas you can read The Battle for Christmas. It is very interesting and debunks a lot of long held views on Christmas traditions.

Question for the mods:

When this book is published, who will have the rights to it? Isn’t anything posted on the SDMB property of the Chicago Reader? And since It’s Christmas! (hi! welcome to the boards) hasn’t actually published his book, it’s not copyrighted, right?

I’m sure there’s something fishy about the above scenario that I can’t figure out. That much is certain, because I’m an idiot. Any non-idiots want to help me out here?

Christmas songs in Broadway shows (The Broadway Christmas CD is an excellent reference)

This is not really an impediment – why couldn’t the author credit the SDMB?

For especially helpful additions, the author of the OP could ask the moderators to e-mail the SDMB member, and thus seek permission to use the material.

It’s certainly feasible … the OP may want to work with the SDMB admins to flesh out details, though.

This won’t be hard to track down – I had a book as a child about Christmas around the world, and many examples are given.

Many traditional Christmas hymns don’t have “Christmas” in the lyrics – “Silent Night” and “Joy to the World” being the first ones to come to mind. Should be easy to research.

I like this one … need some TV geeks to help here, though.

Slam dunk – can do this in one afternoon with Google.

A trip to the local library or Barnes and Noble can help here.

Like the Grinch? Scrooge? Where’s this list going?

Cartoon Xmas songs? Like the “Snow Miser” and “Heat Miser” songs from the Rankin-Bass classic A Year Without a Santa Claus?

Bad songs … mmmm … does Bob & Doug McKenzie’s “12 Days of Christmas” ( … and a beer) qualify? It’s hilarious, but is it bad? Or Cheech and Chong’s “Santa Claus and His Old Lady” (also funny)? A link to peruse.

Well, I wanted to help some more, but I’ve got to head out. I’ll be interested to see where this thread ends up tomorrow.

Hmm. Not sure that this applies to “doing [my] actual work.” As I said, I’ve got half or more than half of the actual writing done (and list ideas with most of the entries), and am simply looking for tips and ideas on trivia tidbits to help finish out the book – and in most cases, specific questions or requests. List entries, where I would still have to research them and write them up. For instance, if someone said “hey, how about the midget in Bad Santa for secondary characters,” I’d research his name, other stuff he’s appeared in, maybe rewatch the movie to get some classic lines. Hardly the SDMB doing my work for me. Oh, and I mentioned in my intro that I’d be happy to include a thanks to the Straight Dope Message Board in my acknowledgments.

However, if the mods determine it should be deleted, I’ll abide by that. I never considered the copyright ramifications … to me, this is the discussion of ideas and the “idea” of the book can’t be copyrighted – you can’t copyright doing a Christmas trivia book, only the exact order of words within it. But please, let’s not get into a debate about it. If the mods find it questionable, please delete.

Should they not, one thing I should have mentioned for others, though, is that I have a co-author working on the song lists. All ideas I’ll pass along to him. As for the Snow Miser and Heat Miser, they’ll definitely be in a cartoon song list, and the characters themselves are listed in the Secondary Cartoon Characters list.

Egg nog
Hot buttered rum
Champagne
Mulled wine
Mulled cider
And a beer… in a tree.

The disclaimer read:

(italics added). This means that they have the right to do anything they want with your posts, but you also have that right with your own posts. So there shouldn’t be an issue.

I am trying to think of where this list would go. Does it have to specifically be famous elves of Santa? I can only name one – that elf in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer that wanted to be a dentist (Dennis?).

If you’re bringing in elves from other realms, you could do write-ups on Tolkien’s Legolas from Lord of the Rings; Snap, Crackle, and Pop; and perhaps the Keebler Elf.

The NFL has had games on Christmas in the past – and up until the mid-70s, there were some Christmas playoff games. I’ll see what I can dig up.

The NBA has games every year on Christmas. Over the last two decades, the league has reserved Christmas Day for marquee matchups (didn’t the Lakers and Celtics play a few regular season games on Christmas Day during the 80s?).

A hockey fan can chime in on the NHL at Christmas time.

This could be an excellent list, but the research will be fairly involved. Contemporary newspaper accounts from 20th-century wars would be your best sources. I am wondering if Googling “Christmas, war” would turn anything up?

  • George from Miracle on 34th Street. Also perhaps the judge, or the judge’s son.
  • Phil Hartman in Jingle All the Way.

OK, here’s a good site about Christmas in War. It’s not super detailed, but it will get you started. The highlights:

Also, following the Battle of Hastings and other Norman incursions into England, William the Conqueror was crowned King of England on Christmas Day, 1066.

Thanks for the awesome link. The GW/Hessians thing I have written up in a list of “it happened on Christmas” – historical events on Christmas – as well as the coronation of William the Conqueror and also the infamous cease-fire during WWI. I think I can cannibalize those three for a strong start to a list of wartime Christmases. Luckily the publishing company also publishes military history, so they’re a resource for me as well.

As for famous elves, I was thinking of any kind. I haven’t had a chance to research it yet, but I’m hopeing that SOMEWHERE out there is a midget Elvis impersonator called Elves. lol. (Oh, and you’re thinking of Hermey.)

Sonic Youth–“Santa Claus Don’t Cop out on Dope”
Weird Al Yankovic–“Christmas at Ground Zero” and “The Night Santa Went Crazy”
The Waitresses–“Christmas Wrapping”
The Ramones–“Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)”

The dentist elf in “Rudolph” was named Hermes.

The elf’s name was Hermey. You can ask Rankin-Bass.

Which version of the 12 days of Christmas?
e.g. 5 gold rings were original about ring neck pigeons

Ah, I think I was confusing him with the Futurama bureaucrat.

You should have an entry about the robot Santa from Futurama, those episodes were awesome.

Well… I have to say, that It’s Christmas registered yesterday asking for help with ideas for a book, and has three posts in this thread and only in this thread.

I’m therefore shutting it down pending investigation.

OK, here’s the feelings of the Moderators:

  • We’re normally interested in helping out writers and other creative types. We understand the need for research and we understand that our members can help with some types of research, but this situtation just doesn’t “feel right.”

  • This is a purely commercial enterprise, with no particular tie to our goal of “fighting ignorance” and no particular involvement with the arts per se. That puts it in a different category than, say, a book by Ian Rowland (“Full Facts of Cold Reading”) or the Bad Astronomer.

  • This person is not a subscribing member or even a member of the community; he/she signed up with a name just for this project. We’re more willing to be helpful to a writer or artist who is part of our online community than for someone who just comes for the free beer.

  • There’s tons and tons of Christmas trivia out there, which can easily be gleaned by one day’s work in a decent sized library, or a couple of hours with Google. Seeking opinions from our Members is… well, OK, it’s not exactly “cheating” but it’s certainly asking us to do your work for you.

So, this thread stays closed.

If It’s Christmas! turns out to be a contributing member of the community with other interests beyond pushing his/her workload onto the Boards, we’ll be glad to reconsider.