Back from hiatus after the ridiculously-long PopCult Gift Guide, the RFC Flashback today brings you most of the Radio Free Charleston Christmas shows, beginning with last year’s. This year’s holiday show debuted just a few days ago, and plans are to have an XMas RFC MINI SHOW on Monday.

Last year we brought you holiday music sung by lovely female voices. You will hear Melanie Larch accompanied by Mark Scarpelli, Marium Bria, Lady D-Doris Fields and The Laser Beams, plus we had an epic cartoon about the war on Christmas by Jacob Fertig.

Above it’s our first Radio Free Charleston Christmas show, episode eleven from 2006, with music from Clownhole and Melanie Larch and lots of animation and weird stuff, hosted from the original location of The Purple Moon.

Below it’s Christmas 2012, hosted from the Marx Toy Museum in Moundsville, with music from The Charleston Gay Mens Chorale, the cast of MARY, Prank Monkey and the duo of Pepper Fandango and Lee Harrah. There’s also animation and a holiday message from Razor Sharp Studios.

Next up is our 2009 Christmas episode of Radio Free Charleston. Being a Christmas show, there was only one thing we could call this edition of RFC–”Terry Funk Shirt.” This extra-long episode is packed with music from Molly Means, Joseph Hale, Todd Burge, and Melanie Larch with The Diablo Blues Band. There’s also some classic animation from the British studio Halas and Batchelor, plus a news flash about a visit from Saint Sputnik.

Joseph and Todd’s songs were recorded at The Boulevard Tavern. We returned to the Tavern for the 2012  Christmas show, with two festive songs from The Bob Thompson Unit. You can see RFC 194 below. The show also has a great holiday tune from Frenchy and the Punk and animation from Jake Fertig.

Radio Free Charleston’s 116th episode, “Christmas With CYAC,”  was a last-minute substitution for a show where all of the tapings fell through.  The original plan was that this episode of the show would feature songs from two local favorites, plus a song or two from the 2010 Contemporary Youth Arts Company production of the original rock opera, “Mary.” with everything being tied together with host segments shot the Monday before Christmas while caroling with Dan and Penny Kehde and the gang from CYAC.

The taping for the other songs didn’t happen (through no fault of the artists) and I was left with the possibility of skipping the holiday show this year, when it occurred to me that I could record some of the Christmas carols, toss in some of the tunes from “Mary” and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.