When snow covers the ground and the days get shorter, you know it’s time to celebrate the winter holidays and spread cheer and good will. Even celebrities can’t resist the action, lending their talent and likeness to all manners of Christmas merriment. Popular personalities of stage, screen and song deliver messages of joy in the form of holiday specials (dramatic retellings of Dicken’s A Christmas Carol and hokey musicals), specially-themed television episodes, festive Christmas albums.

Sometimes celebrities assist retailers in promoting their products with the spirit of the season in mind. From luxury items like hi-fi stereos and liquor to the seemingly banal cellophane tape and fizzy antacid. Any commonly used product can be deemed gift-worthy when you put a celebrity in a Santa hat!

How willing these celebrities were to shill to consumers is not a question easily answered. How many of the disembodied heads were fully aware of their appearance in ads for cigarettes and clock radios? What deal did Harriet Nelson cut to promote her son Ricky’s album in a Kodak commercial?

Occasionally the stars will step up for a good cause and encourage “good will toward man” through Christmas Seals and charitable organizations. Who else but John Wayne could remind us of the true reason for the season?