Retro Crimbo 2012: Yule love the look of this ~ a pictorial tribute to the yuletide

Festive favourites: with their classic Christmas TV offerings, comedy legends Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise were real-life Santa Clauses in the 1970s and early 1980s for households up and down Britain

A picture can speak a thousand words, so they say. That’s a Christmas cracker of an old cliché, I know – but then the images below are clichés too, containing as they do Christmas trees, Santa suits, gift-wrapped presents, mock – and real – snow, stockings, tinsel, fixed smiles, awkward group poses and some very dubious ’70s fashions (as well as several other clichéd words).

What they also contain though are the great and the good, the famous and the talented, the whimsically recalled and the sadly nearly forgotten in some sensational and so-bad-they’re-good seasonal settings, few of which, I suspect, you’ll have ever seen before.

So crack out the mulled wine, folks, as down George’s Journal‘s chimney of yuletide imagery we go…

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Bing-Dong-Merrily: Bing Crosby in Santa get-up in promotion of 1954 festive film favourite White Christmas (left) and with co-stars Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen and Danny Kaye (right)

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Family (and friends) album: the cast of classic Christmas movie It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)

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Santa’s little helper: Angelic Audrey Hepburn helps Old Saint Nick dish out presents to children

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Silver belles: Debbie Reynolds (left) and Natalie Wood (right) make festive cheesecake poses

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A family Christmas: John F and Jackie Kennedy pass The White House’s Blue Room Christmas tree in 1961 (left); Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and their son Stephen in front of theirs (right)

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Rat Pack and Bat Girl: Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra on the set of Robin And The Seven Hoods (1964) (left) and ’60s TV’s Catwoman Yvonne Craig on a Christmas sleigh (right) 

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Filling stockings: Marilyn Monroe in a pair of particularly appealing yuletide images

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Fab-tastic festivity: The Beatles with their presents from the tree (above left and right) and in Dickensian clobber (bottom left) and pantomime costumes from the 1963 Christmas shows tour (bottom right)

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Likely lads: A very 1960s Rolling Stones toast the best of the season (left) and outfitted-as-Santa footballers George Best and Mike Sumberbee are surrounded by very tasty totty (right)

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Brits of all right: UK stars Diana Dors (l) and Julie Christie (r) in cheesecake yuletide poses

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Family affair and French fancy: Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra perform with their daughters Gail and Nancy on a 1967 Christmas edition of The Dean Martin Show (left); Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve in a snowy scene from the legendary François Truffaut’s film Mississippi Mermaid (1971) (right)

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Dizzying and fizzing: the head-twisting beauty of a leopard-print-clad  Ann-Margaret surrounded by Christmas presents (left) and Sammy Davis Jr. advertising Alka-Seltzer for the festive season (right)

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The princess’s presents: Grace Kelly wrapping Christmas gifts most likely in the 1960s

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Double-O-Crimbo: Poster art of George Lazenby as James Bond with Santa hat (left) and Telly Savalas as Ernst Stavro Blofeld delivering seasons greetings in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) (right)

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Merry Motown: Diana Ross and The Supremes on a sleigh (left) and The Jackson Five (right)

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Carry on Christmas: Sid James and Barbara Windsor in Santa outfits for the cover of the Christmas 1973 edition of TV Times magazine (left) and greeting guests at a ’70s ITV yuletide party (right)

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Rudolfs and Forsyth: Morecambe and Wise and Brucie in a sketch from their 1975 Christmas Show

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Tinsel-tastic: Julie Andrews guest-starring in a 1977 festive edition of The Muppets Show (left) and presenter John Noakes with the legendary Blue Peter advent crown from the ’70s (right)

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Festive Fonzie and yuletide disco: a scene from the 1974 Happy Days episode Guess Who’s Coming To Christmas? (left) and an unmistakably ’70s Christmas disco party image (right)

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It’s Chriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiistmas!: Noddy Holder’s Slade (l) and Roy Wood’s (with white hair) Wizzard (r) performing respectively 1973’s Merry Xmas Everybody and I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday 

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Robot turkey: the infamously ill-received Star Wars Holiday Special broadcast in the States on the CBS TV network in November 1978 (left) and an antlered R2D2 and C3P0 dressed in festive garb (right)

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Winter wonderland: Top Of The Pops’ in-house ’70s dancers Pan’s People hoof it up in the snow

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Advent albums: Top Of The Pops discs of chart hits from December 1971 (left) and December 1979 (right)

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Having a scarf laugh: David Bowie introduces the classic animation The Snowman (1982)

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Sitting on San-T’s knee: Nancy Reagan and Mr T merrily pose for the cameras in the 1980s 

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Merry musicians: Andrew Ridgely and George Michael in artwork from Wham!’s 1984 seasonal single Last Christmas (left) and Kylie Minogue in yuletide get-up from the late ’80s (right)

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Hitting the right note: Gizmo dons a Santa hat in the seasonally-set comedy hit Gremlins (1984)

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Sitcom Christmas: Michael J Fox and cast in the 1983 Family Ties episode A Keaton Christmas Carol (left) and loveable, iconic alien Alf on the cover of a Christmas issue of the Alf magazine (right)

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Christmas in New York: Santa’s sleigh flies over Manhattan in Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)

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Game for a laugh: Blankety Blank host Les Dawson with (clockwise from left) Syd Little, Samantha Fox, Lynda Barron, Wendy Richard, Frank Carson and Eddie Large on the 1986 Christmas show

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Alice dalliance: The Two Ronnies starring in their ’85 Christmas special’s Alice In Wonderland sketch

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Seasonal spirits: the ghoul hunters get festive and spread goodwill in Ghostbusters II (1989)

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