Five viral videos to get you in the Christmas spirit

It’s less than a week before Christmas – did you know? With all that last-minute shopping, marathon wrapping sessions and angst over what to serve up for dinner, it’s very hard to muster up any Christmas spirit during this final countdown period.

Alas, there is a way to silence your inner Grinch – what you need to do is sit down, grab a mince pie and watch these hilarious, touching and cheeky viral Christmas videos. Some real crackers have emerged over the past month – here are our five favourites:

1. Christmas jammies

Do you find reading Christmas ‘newsletter’ cards a little tedious? This US family may have found the solution.

Penn and Kim Holderness, and their children Lola and Penn, have turned their yearly update into a fun viral hit. Watch as they recap each family member’s achievements from the past twelve months to the tune of Will Smith’s 1998 hit Miami… while wearing dorky Christmas jammies.

Yep, it’s just as fun as it sounds (it’s also a ‘shameless plug’ for the Holderness’ new media venture – but at least it’s a clever one).

2. 25 Years of Christmas

The home video is as essential to Christmas as fruit cake and those lame jokes you find inside your bon-bon. Dad’s shaky camcorder footage might seem cringe-worthy at the time, but it’s a priceless way to immortalise those beloved family memories.

Nick Confalone’s dad filmed his family walking down the stairs every Christmas morning for 25 years, and this year, Nick has edited them all together into a video called ’25 Years of Christmas’. The result is at once joyful and moving – keep the tissues handy.

3. Apple’s new Christmas ad

Wondering how on earth you’re going to convince your kids to put down their phones these holidays? This video goes out to you. Apple Inc. has somehow managed to pull off an ad that a) makes you want to buy an iPhone, and b) elicits a genuine emotional response. What?

The ad focuses on a family as they descend on Grandma & Grandpa’s house for a white Christmas. Their teenage son is depicted in a pose many parents of teens will be familiar with – head down, nose glued to mobile phone – while his family embrace, decorate snowmen and add the final touches to the Christmas tree.

So far, so frustrating, right? Wrong. Just wait until the second half of the video – you’ll see why it has the whole world sniffling. It’ll also have you hankering for a snowy Christmas…

4. A whole new meaning to Jingle Bells

This ad by Kmart and Joe Boxer in the US has attracted its fair share of criticism (something about not being in ‘the Christmas spirit’, apparently), but we here in the iVillage office definitely fall into the ‘love it’ category.

After all, what’s not to love about a chorus line of men wearing tuxedos and boxer shorts, gyrating their hips and jingling their… uh, bells? Watch it here and make up your own mind.

5. Watch this woman transform into Santa

Want to see a real Christmas miracle?

Ad agency Victors & Spoils have take the fashion industry’s obsession with heavy-handed Photoshopping and used it to hilarious effect. Watch here as an attractive young woman in a festive red bikini is transformed into… Santa Claus.