This episode - marking the first full year of HARK! - arrives on Epiphany, also known as Three Kings Day. While not a big deal in much of North America, it's celebrated to much fanfare in many places in the world, including Spain and Latin America - giving us a good excuse to add the first two Spanish-language holiday songs to our list, "Feliz Navidad" by Jose Feliciano and "Ocho Kandelikas" as performed by Pink Martini. Gracias por escuchar!

As the first year of HARK draws to a close, Ian and RJ take a moment to reflect on 2015, New Year's resolutions, and years past - and the bands behind this week's songs provide a perfect soundtrack for such navel-gazing. "New Year" by Death Cab for Cutie and "This Year" by The Mountain Goats are not exactly NYE party fare, but a lovely way to wrap up our last episode of the year.

After a year of listening to winter holiday music and 49 episodes of elation and despair, we've finally reached Christmas - and our 50th episode spectacular, in which we add the 99th and 100th songs to our list! For this special occasion, Ian and RJ have been planning surprise picks for each other - with RJ shooting for the top of the list, and Ian aiming to find the worst of the worst.

With Christmas fast approaching, RJ & Ian return to some requests. First up is "Taking Care of Christmas" by Randy Bachman of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, which is exactly what you'd expect, followed by the infuriatingly enduring "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" by Elmo and Patsy, which nearly kills RJ's indomitable Christmas spirit. Thank you to Jeri & Corey for the requests!

Happy Hanukkah! This week we grow the number of Hanukkah songs on our list with two artists who - while better known for their humorous work - have produced sincere and meaningful songs about Hanukkah: "Hanukkah Blessings" by the Barenaked Ladies and "Relics of Love and Light" by Erran Baron Cohen.

Hanukkah is upon us - it's time to celebrate with two weeks of all Hanukkah music! Now, we're no experts on this Festival of Lights, so for this week we turn to two (somewhat) educational songs: "How Do You Spell Chanukah?" by The Leevees and "Wikipedia Chanukah" by Jonathan Coulton and John Roderick.

Thanksgiving. Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Dragon Tuesday. It's that time of year: Christmas is coming. We cover "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" as performed by Johnny Mathis, as well as another update of a classic, "White Christmas" by The Drifters.

Whether or not blue snowflakes have started to fall in your part of the world, signs of the holiday season have begun to appear. If you're already sick of eggnog and Christmas music, this episode - in which we cover two songs about what a bummer Xmas really is - is for you.

This week's episode comes out on Diwali, the festival of lights celebrated in India and around the world! In honor of this bright and joyful holiday, RJ and Ian listen to two upbeat winter holiday songs about light - "Candlelight", a light-hearted Hanukkah parody by The Maccabeats, and "Light of Christmas", an odd and uneven Veggie Tales anthem by Owl City and tobyMac. Thanks again to Emma for requesting "Candlelight"!

This episode features HARK's first guest - Ian's sister, Emma stops by to help celebrate RJ's birthday, review two glam rock Christmas songs, and make a live request - stay tuned 'til the end if you want to find out what we're listening to next week! Thanks again to Emma for joining us and being such wonderful company.