Christmas Report

We're still drinking our coffee "holiday style," right? At least until the kids are back in school?

How did the holidays go for you, or are they still going on? My family celebrates on Christmas Eve (I don't know if that comes from the Dutch ancestry or from the long line of ministers/farmers or from a combination of both), so we've already had The Day of Presents/Celebration followed by The Day of Playing With Presents, and now we are on The Day of Flopping Around Feeling Cabin-Feverish.

I never quite caught the holiday spirit this year, but that's okay. Things were nice anyway, and I managed to do the things I wanted to do to make sure the children still had enough Christmas. I found it motivating to think things like, "They can't do Christmas for themselves; it's something you need to do for them, like buying their clothes and making their meals." I ended up doing MORE Christmas things this year, because I had to actively think about it.


Gingerbread houses (made out of graham crackers) (two separate stations because aaaacccckkkk so many children reaching):

Christmas cookies (gingerbread men purchased from grocery bakery, circles sliced from roll of Pillsbury cookie dough) (maximum three kids at a time, because otherwise aaaaackkk):

Tree-decorating (which turned out to make things EASIER for me):

And presents:

I'm pleased with how things went, and looking forward to the new year. The annual calendar post is up at Milk and Cookies, and also a Christmas loot report.

How about you? Are you pleased with how things went?

When Does It Feel Like Christmas? (If You Celebrate Christmas, That Is. Because Otherwise It Probably Never Feels Like Christmas.)

My mom and dad watch the show The Closer, and my mom was telling me about a funny part in an episode where the people on the show have to handle a big mass-murder thing right at Christmas. The guy doing one autopsy after another looks up from the corpse he's working on and says something like, "You know how there's always that moment where it suddenly Feels Like Christmas? Yeah. This year, not so much."

My mom's real point, besides trying to get me to watch the show, is that she heard that and thought to herself, YES, there IS always a moment where it suddenly feels like Christmas, so she was asking if it felt like Christmas to me yet, and I said not quite yet but almost.

There are a few times when I generally notice it Really Feeling Like Christmas:

• When I've successfully sent the kids off to school on that last day with all their cards for bus drivers and teachers (a project that frazzles me and is so satisfying to complete)


• When the kids come home from their last day of school before Christmas vacation


• The night before, when I'm reading in the living room and I keep admiring the Christmas tree and thinking about how excited the kids will be in the morning (that excitement is more appealing and sweet in thought than in action)


• When we go on the Christmas Eve Light-Viewing Drive

There are also little sub-points, where it feels like Christmas but doesn't Feel Like Christmas: when I'm doing Christmas cards; when Christmas cards start arriving in the mail; when we put up the Christmas lights; when I'm actively shopping for Christmas gifts; when I'm wrapping Christmas gifts; when radio stations start playing Christmas music; when I re-read the Maeve Binchy Christmas short stories; when it seems appropriate to buy egg nog.

When does it usually feel like Christmas to you?

Christmas Books Reading List

On the post Christmas Propelling, I mentioned my Christmas books reading list, and then Becky and Betsy both asked about the other books on that list, so here they are:

The only one that is important to me that I read every year (i.e., I look forward to it as a significant part of Christmas, and will rearrange things to make sure there's time to read it) is Maeve Binchy's This Year It Will Be Different. I love it so much, and the stories are so familiar to me now that I start getting weepy and sentimental just OPENING THE BOOK, and I just really love it.

I don't know whether to recommend it to others, though. You know how people are like, "Oh, I read Anna Karenina every year and I just LOVE it so MUCH!," and then you read it and you think "OMG this is so incredibly awful and depressing and there are so many Russian names to keep track of I can't STAND it, I want to DIE"? You know how that is? Well, I love Maeve Binchy, but when I have recommended her in the past, it has sometimes happened that the recipient of the recommendation has referred to her books as "so depressing." Whereas I find them uplifting and satisfying and if anything a little overly undepressing ("Hey, everything works out right! Again!")---but that is how some people feel about dark Russian novels that have words such as "doomed" and "tragedy" in the descriptions, so clearly there is a certain element of crapshootage to the book-recommendations thing. And it would be hard for me to say that stories involving hideous and unspeakably-rude stepdaughters, sad affairs with married men, and canceled weddings were not A BIT on the doomed/tragedy side, if someone were to read This Year It Will Be Different and then call me out on that. And I don't know if I loved it quite so much the first time I read it. And so forth.

ANYWAY. It's my favorite Christmas book. And in fact I will buy a copy for someone. Leave a comment that specifically mentions it if you want to be included in the drawing; I think you ought to be able to comment on a post without being entered into a contest. My goal will be to get you a hardcover edition, because I think it's much nicer, but this means a gamble with a used copy from an Amazon Marketplace seller---speaking of crapshoots. They're always like, "NEW condition! BRAND-NEW!!" and then it arrives all dinged and scuffed. Which I wouldn't have MINDED if it had been LISTED that way.

So, as I was saying, This Year It Will Be Different is the one that's every year. Then I have Augusten Burroughs's You Better Not Cry (Amazon search results lead me to a $21.99 hardcover, but I see there is also an $8.80 bargain-priced hardcover so I linked to that), which I discussed in the Christmas Propelling post linked to above. This year I also have a new one in the pile: David Sedaris's Holidays on Ice. It has other holidays in it besides just the winter ones.

Two others on the pile are Miss Read books. They're a little hard to find, but I see there's a single volume that has both that can be bought used starting at about $4.00 (they say starting at a penny or two, but that doesn't take into account the four dollars shipping). There are in the "pleasant little tales of a quiet village" category, very nice for reading in a room with Christmas lights and maybe a fireplace.

And the last is Christmas Stories. This one includes stories by famous English-class authors: Dickens and Chekov and Updike. I shouldn't really have it in the pile, because it is the one I leaf through a little bit if I've read all the others. But it has such a pretty binding and I love seeing it with the other books.

All right, so that is the Christmas Book pile. And remember to mention in a comment if you want to try the Maeve Binchy book. I'll pick a name soon, in the hopes of getting the book there before Christmas (although there's no hope of it if it's a book-rate option, which can take weeks). How about...Monday. I'll pick someone sometime on Monday. (U.S. mailing addresses only, as usual---I have Amazon ship it directly.)

(Also see: Christmas Books Follow-Up.)

Edited to add: The winner is Sarah Filchak. I'll email you, Sarah!

Tree Decorated!

The tree is decorated! The tree is decorated!

Does it look a BIT as if someone stood back six to ten feet and FLUNG ornaments at the tree? This is because I crossed "Christmas will not be good unless the ornaments are pleasingly arranged" off this year's list right after I crossed off "Christmas will not be good unless all seven names are signed on the Christmas cards."

After writing yesterday about how I was overwhelmed and trying to fix it by reducing unnecessary perfectionism, I employed my "Well, what CAN you do?" tactic to get myself to do the next thing I really did want to get done: decorating the tree. I couldn't seem to make myself decorate the tree, but I COULD bring up the box of ornaments from the basement and put it in the living room.

From there, nature took its course: children came home from school and descended upon the box. The ornaments were applied two, three, even five to the tip of a single drooping branch. But the ornaments were ON THE TREE.

And, bonus: the children felt as if they had participated in a happy holiday activity. I can picture them later in life reflecting on my awesome laid-back mothering: "She let US do it, however we wanted! She didn't get all uptight about things that didn't matter!" Yeah. That's how it happened.

Soothing Holiday Words

I am speaking soothingly these days into my own ears: "No, no, shhhhhhh, it's fine, you ALWAYS think there's too much to do before Christmas, and it ALWAYS works out JUST FINE."

A soothing mantra, I've found, is "No one really cares." I used this most recently to help me dial back the perfectionism with the Christmas cards this year: I genuinely enjoy sending them so I don't WANT to skip them (I know I COULD skip, but I don't WANT to), but it absolutely works to write "Love, Swistle" and call it a day. No one really cares; no one will say, "Awww, but she usually writes 'Happy holidays and a very happy New Year!' first, and then writes the names of all seven family members! How are we going to have a happy holiday/year without Swistle WRITING that we should have one?"
 
And just because I OWN tons of cute gift wrap and ribbons and gift tags doesn't mean I have to USE them. Some years it's fun to do that, making a pretty assortment of wrappings under the tree and figuring out interesting combinations of coordinating/contrasting ribbon/tags. Other years I want to use a roll of gift wrap until it's gone, and then start on the next one and use IT until IT is gone, and I want to use a sharpie to write to/from on everything. No one really cares which way I do it. No one will say, "Awww, last year my three presents were in three different papers! This year they're all in the SAME paper! Christmas is RUINED!"

And it would be NICE if I had each of the three younger children make cards for their teachers. It would be NICE if I made the little plates of treats for the mail carrier and our neighbors. It would be NICE if I got some extra snapshots printed to send with the card to my great-aunt. It would be NICE if I arranged a gingerbread-house-making activity. But I'm not going to this year, and no one will deep-down care.

(This would be the opposite of soothing on the years that I am getting everything done.)

If It Were Contagious, I Would Breathe on You in Exchange for a Small Fee

ANOTHER thing I've had to learn again and again (I'm picking up this post as if it's been in the forefront of all our minds since then) is that if I am thinking things such as "It's really just a matter of making Good Choices---not giving up ALL treats, of course not, but having them MODERATION," it means I have an infection, and the infection is near my brain. Last time I think it was ear; this time it's sinus.

I hope you won't think less of me when I say that once I'd looked it up online and learned that most routine/moderate sinus infections clear up without antibiotics (and that in fact many of them don't respond to antibiotics), I decided to cruise along with the infection for awhile. It is hard to give up this little temporary time of "I just have to watch PORTION SIZES, that's all!" and even "Oops, it's 3:00 and I just realized I forgot to have lunch!"---and meanwhile the pounds leaving one by one.

Christmas Propelling

This video propelled me RIGHT INTO Christmas spirit: it's Jimmy Fallon, Mariah Carey, The Roots, and some little kids, wearing Christmas sweaters and using classroom musical instruments to do "All I Want For Christmas Is You."




And I NEEDED a little propelling. The tree is not up. Nothing is wrapped. I still have many things to buy and mail. The Christmas cards are not done. (Although that is PARTLY not my fault: the photos I ordered were done wrong so I had to re-order them.)

I HAVE done my annual re-read of the first Christmas book on the pile (You Better Not Cry, which I read first because the stories are not, er, traditionally Christmas-enspiriting) (stomach pumped, boyfriend dying of AIDS, house flooding, waking up in a hotel room with a stranger, etc.). I usually like to bask in the lights of the tree as long as humanly possible, so it is a little stressful to be wasting day after day: here I am, reading about the Christmas when Augusten Burroughs found himself on the street after a 2-day alcoholic blackout, and there are NO CHRISTMAS LIGHTS. And the children are agitating because we have a "Candy canes may only be eaten when they can be harvested from a tree" rule, and the TREE IS NOT UP. There the candy canes sit, tantalizing in their boxes, and the parents do not seem to REALIZE the enormity of this issue: they're all "Eh, maybe tomorrow? Maybe this weekend?" when asked when the tree WILL be up! As if days without candy canes is NO BIG DEAL!

So! This morning I brought the Christmas tree box up from the basement! It is a small step, but it is a step!