Have Yourself a Gritty Little Christmas: Listen to a selection of seasonal songs about the Flyers’ fuzzy freak
The timeline of peoples’ varying feelings toward Gritty has gone something like this:
September 24: The Philadelphia Flyers unveil Gritty, complete with elaborate backstory. Locals are immediately skeptical, noting his somewhat unsettling appearance. Is Gritty just a weirder, oranger version of the Phillie Phanatic?
September 25: Folks from outside of the Philly area catch wind of Gritty, and begin to relentlessly mock him online. A lot of the insults tossed at Gritty are just unnecessarily rude, and overly fixated on his dead-in-the-eyes stare.
September 26 – present: Philly takes the insults extremely personally, and jumps to Gritty’s defense. We’ve embraced him as one of our own; he’s the hero we didn’t know we needed. He’s been honored by City Council, he received thousands of write-in votes for Governor of Pennsylvania on Election day, and local business have gone all out creating Gritty-themed products from donuts to beer. He’s even been the subject of not just one, but two playlists here on The Key.
And now it seems like some out-of-towners are finally warming up to the idea of Gritty. He’s finally getting the respect he deserves, and just had a new honor bestowed upon him in the form of some original holiday songs. Continue reading →
