Star Trek Christmas in July? It’s only logical to celebrate!
This summer more than most, I’ve noticed advertisers leaning into the concept of Christmas in July.
The phrase apparently may be almost a century old but I’ve never heard as much about it as I have this year. From major online retailers to the Hallmark Channel (naturally) to my local radio stations, everyone seems to be telling me I should need and want a little Christmas halfway through 2021.
But how should Star Trek fans best celebrate Christmas in July?
In the northern hemisphere, it’s not cold enough to break out the ugly Star Trek holiday sweaters. It’s too early to string up the Hallmark Star Trek Christmas tree ornaments (assuming you ever took them down—some sit on my shelves year-round).
Fortunately, any season’s a good season for watching Star Trek episodes and movies.
So put on your Santa hat, pour yourself a glass of nog (eggnog, that is, not the first Ferengi in Starfleet), and enjoy this watch list curated for a very merry Star Trek Christmas in July!
Beamin’ down to winter wonder worlds: “Breaking the Ice” (ENT)
Gentle snowfalls feature prominently in Christmas movies and TV shows.
Many songs on the standard Christmas soundtrack feature the white stuff: “White Christmas,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Jingle Bells,” and more.
Even some Christmas hymns imagine Jesus being born “In the Bleak Midwinter,” or when “The Snow Lay On the Ground”—though shepherds in first-century Judea would not be in the fields of Bethlehem, keeping their sheep, in the winter.
For most of the continental U.S., “white Christmases” turn out to be historically rare. But the meteorological data doesn’t stop us from thinking of the holiday season as a time when Jack Frost is nipping at our nose as we sing, “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!”
If you’re celebrating Christmas in July to conjure some relief from the summer heat, you may want to check out snowy and icy worlds in Star Trek.
Rura Penthe comes to mind. No doubt there are cheerier places to spend Christmas than the Klingon penal asteroid “known throughout the galaxy as the alien’s graveyard.” But even if you’ve been sentenced to hard labor for crimes against the Empire, as Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelly) were in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, or as Captain Archer was in the second-season Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Judgment,” at least you won’t be hot!
But if it’s an adventure, not lifetime imprisonment, you’re after, try walking on the surface of a comet as Lieutenant Malcolm Reed (Dominic Keating) and Ensign Travis Mayweather (Anthony Montgomery) did in the first-season Enterprise episode, “Breaking the Ice.”
Before their harrowing experience falling into an ice chasm, they had the chance to build a snowman.
They didn’t have an old felt hat to put on its head, as the kids who built Frosty the Snowman did—but they did, not long after this clip, ultimately give it Vulcan ears!