“When the song was first released, I was performing it at events all by myself,” he writes in an email. But the popularity of “Crabs for Christmas” led to other Baltimore-themed Christmas songs, then to albums and finally to a live show he performs with his backup singers, The Hons. Since 2008, their annual revue has sold out the upstairs cabaret at Germano’s, a restaurant in Baltimore’s Little Italy neighborhood. DeBoy says the original “Crabs for Christmas” still gets spun on a few local stations.

DeBoy’s Baltimore Christmas songs revel in the city’s distinctive regional accent and its kitschy, working-class sensibility, as immortalized by local filmmaker John Waters. (DeBoy played a lecherous doctor in Waters’ 2004 movie, A Dirty Shame.) Throughout his cabaret show, DeBoy refers to beloved Baltimore basics — or if you will, cliches — such as beehive hairdos, sauerkraut and scrubbing marble stoops.

“You know, where we grew up, there [were] no … marble stoop,” observes audience member Mark Jascewsky rather wistfully. He’s originally from Chicago and moved to the Baltimore area in 1989. “There were no hubcaps hanging in the tree. But [DeBoy’s] lyrics portray such a vivid picture. You can imagine it very easily and it brings that part of Baltimore’s history to your life.”

In fact, DeBoy’s songs have become part of Jascewsky’s own family traditions. His three kids say they all particularly enjoy a number that ends with a cat being electrocuted. It’s called “Aluminum Christmas Tree.”

Another member of the audience, self-identified “Balti-moron” Dan White, appreciates the merry mingling of Christmas and regional nostalgia. “It’s one of those kind of sentiments that can carry you throughout the whole year,” he says.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Regardless of your spiritual affiliations, the end of the year provides an opportunity to reflect on what we’d like to do differently next year, what we’ve learned, our successes and failures, and what makes us thankful.

In that spirit, we invite you to enjoy this holiday concert from the Washington, D.C., choir Cantigas, which performs songs from across the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world. Whether you choose to sit still or twist and shout, the music’s mix of reflection and celebration provides a perfect soundtrack for digesting 2014 and celebrating the arrival of the year to come.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.