An Utterly Ungrinchy Welcome to the Xmas Season

It is officially ADVENT!

Season of Firebending!

 Which is another, less terrifying, more denominational, way of saying The Christmas Season!! (AHHHHHHNOOOOOOAAAAAH) I'm actually always excited by the onset of what could well be termed the crazy-time. Despite the crowds, the dearth of good will in shopping malls, the sudden inability to navigate spaces or recognize basic human decency in anyone setting foot near a shopping center of any sort... despite the stress, the cold and the pressure... I'm still a kid at heart and I love Christmas. Which is funny because I'm not the sunniest person, I don't like spending money all the much and I doubly always panic and swear under - or occasionally quite over - my breath when people ask me what I want for Christmas.

Not that I don't enjoy getting gifts, but since when did I have to decide? I can't make basic day to day decisions like what toothpaste I want without majorly long dark tea times of the soul! I know, I know, better I decide than get a day-glo crocheted reindeer sweater with sequined noses and flashing red-eyes (ok, I might actually wear that). But, as intimated, I am historically bad at making decisions for myself - I mean, Homer has written Greek epics about my inability to decide on a simple work shirt and subsequent failure to acquire anything that I would ever consider wearing in public without ten shots of whiskey first - and tend to run from stores in panic after looking at the racks upon racks of possible purchases...

But despite that, the gift-giving has strong sentimental ties to better days of being an obsenely easily pleased child with tolerant parents who pretended her terrifying dollar store purchase presents and half sewn fabric "pillows" were the best gifts ever conceived of by man. So it makes kind of an interesting list of love-hate that gives the season its mulled spicy flavor. Here's my list of things I like about this season starting with

The gift-giving insanity:

 Once I get into the picking and choosing and spending mode, I kind of enjoy the frivolous knick-knackery and stuffing of oranges and little foil chocolates into unused leg-wear. And the rare moment when something just screams another person is ever so magical. Of course, it is usually complicated because the person whatever theoretical gift may scream may not be a person I can give a gift to without giving gifts to a bunch of people for which the material world remains mute... oh the balancing involved.

My major gift-giving philosophy is mutli-fold: (1) people get more pleasure from experiences than things, particularly as we get older and our storage spaces more oppressively full (2) useful things that are useful but slightly personalized and last long enough that the recipient is reminded of something positive every time s/he uses these things are always plusses, and (3) sometimes there is nothing better than the thing that somebody clearly wants and could use but would never buy for him/herself.

Going with the experience-over-objects I tend to request these items by default: money towards my dance habit; materials for my dance habit (shoes, a camera to tape myself, specific music or materials for dj-ing); tickets to ballet/opera/theater for me and Mr. Wright; occasionally other items from my amazon list (ok, those heated socks are looking awfully tempting these days); and sometimes just instead of exchanging gifts, we go out together somewhere and foot each other's bills. I'd like to say that gift certificates are great for me, but I inevitably (1) then must go through the deciding and shopping debacle that plagues the other 11 months of the year, and (2) will inevitably lose the damned thing long before utilizing it causing me a vague feeling of guilt.

For giving,  I know people are happier when you pick off their list, but I really enjoy doing something a little creative and a little surprising. Call me selfish, but the gift of giving is kind of a literal phrase, isn't it? We get a kick out of pleasing others and reminding them why we're awesome and how we get them. One of my favorite gifts for somebody else last year was a coffee mug and calendar that I designed online for Mr. Wright. The calendar featured 12 months of slow lorises (our ongoing relationship totem animal, except I am now a tamarin and he is the loris, as evidenced by our morning paces) and a coffee mug with a picture of a monkey with its head buried in a cup of coffee. I love that he uses both every day. It makes the gift as gratifying for me as for him.

Church/Carols/Singing

Anyways, gifts are sometimes fraught with stress and peril but also gratifying as are most of the holiday-related traditions. I love Advent services at my Dad's church and their Christmas Eve service - it's one of the few times you'll get to hear Palestrina, Gounod, Bach, Verdi, and so on for free in a very satisfying accoustical area. I studied voice fairly seriously back in the day, leaving me at a fairly familiar point of having just enough residual technique to have a booming vibrato and little enough to sight-read or stay particularly on key... church is kind of a safe harbor for loud women with slightly tart warbles. And during the holiday season, it's my place where I can sing songs familiar enough that it isn't a flailing vocal zumba routine (just loud and a little lemony). Moving to music is one of my most gratifying experiences and why dance is my life and obsession. Moving one's vocal chords and becoming part of that music is pretty up there as well.

And man are lights and stained glass pretty

The Frivolous Consumption of Candy, Sparkles and Themed Everything:

Parties... well, I'm not usually a big party person. I will always miss our old neighborhood carroling party that we went to when I was a kid. I tolerate other parties these days, because at least they are full of pretty lights and lots of nummy festive things. Speaking of which, theme candy and goodies are at a peak around this time and I love the novelty (Mint Chocolate M&M's, every variety of little bells, Cherry Cordial Hershey Kisses and Mint Hershey Kisses, peppermint Andes mints, Dark Chocolate everything, cranberry everything, nutmeg/cloves/mace/cinnamon/ginger/spices in everything... at minor peak in hazlenut flavored things, although there really should be more... mmmmm). And of course there are candles and chocolate. The candles appeal to my inner pyromaniac (see photo 1, supra this text) and the chocolate is just... well... chocolate! Behind little tiny doors that I can hunt down and open, proving that I have earned the chocolate. Then more chocolate in socks hiding on the fireplace. And even more in pretty silver bowls.

The food: 

And there's the holiday meals, proper. I rarely cook beyond my official status as Empress of the Single Serving Microwave Delicacy (and I can make a mean anything in a microwave). Big meals really do not suit my style of eating a tiny amount every hour or so like a teeny little birdy, and thus I generally tend to prepare food fit for a tiny little birdy stomach and skip the grand preparations and silly formalities like a dinner table.

Thanksgiving/Christmas/Easter have been my times to follow complicated and elaborate recipes and share the preparation all the way through with my Dad. It's one of my most meaninful warm-and-fuzzy traditions that we began to share after my parents divorced. Even when I was a plucky and willful teenager asserting my independence left and right through irritatingly avoidant means, we always had that and it was always a moment of perfect harmony between us. Makes cooking on any day have a special feel about it, but the smells of our traditional holiday meals well-up a million memories and immediately connect me to every year of my lifel. It's also the time that we take out the fine china, crystal and silver and sit in my father's ridiculously high end European-Palace dining room with ourselves and perhaps a few others. It's always fairly sedate and very unlike the traditional insanity. Eating in that space from those fine objects gives me an entirely different focus on eating and consuming and a certain epicurean delicacy effervesces through the experience even as my Dad starts groaning because he ate enough to feed a small African village for ten days.

The threat/promise of a White Christmas:


I'm a sap. I know I'll hate the damned dirty snow eventually, but that first fall is so giddy, whirling and fantastic... The world gets that eerie apocalyptic hush and things calm for a second (well assuming you aren't on the freeway, although once the first five accidents happen, the calm of sitting in a dead stop is kind of apropos). Now that I don't live on top of Capital Hill (or as well called it last year, the vertical ice rink), I'm a little more prepared for a day or two of being snowed in in a more moderate fashion.

The five billion holiday movies we must watch every year, because I am stubborn about tradition:


These are basically Scrooged, A Christmas Story, Bad Santa, Die Hard (best Xmas movie ever), maybe Batman Returns, probably inevitably Elf since it plays nonstop on Comedy Central starting in mid-October...and if I'm really being obstinate, the odd Gene Kelly/Fred Astaire sapstravaganza. This year, I am clearly adding A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas, because I love Wafflebot and Wafflebot loves me.

The ornaments!

And of course, the tree. As I've mentioned before, the tree and the ornaments hold particular meaning and sentimentality. I am starting a tradition of keeping an ornament to commemorate each year of my adult life. This assumes that my adult life started in my second year of law school, which is more than arbitrary, but there we go. It looks like after this year, I may overburden my apartment-friendly construction paper tree.

On my tree:

* The Skiing Mooses. They're my 2009 memento for the first holiday I spent with my boytoy. It was a ski trip with his mother and brother. Since I had neither his mother before nor skiied before, it could have gone horribly awry, but blessedly did not. I loved his family, I took to skiing pretty quickly and it was just a really great time.

* The dancer. My 2010 memento is the dancers, because last year was the year that Uandme, my first dance studio officially closed. They had a large going away party and I attended with Andrew. I saw people I hadn't seen since before law school and it re-grounded me and stirred the embers of passion for life and dance out of the 1/2/3L years. I still didn't get to dance much for the rest of my 3L year, but it reminded me of who I was and where I would return.

* The filler red ornaments - of no particular sentimentality, although it makes me all warm and fuzzy to realize they won't break.

* The globe ornament that my Dad brought me back from his place in Hawaii.

** For this year, I'm not entirely decided. Obviously there have been a heaping truckload of momentuous occasions to concievably commemorate. I think I may take the brooch that I wore on my maid of honor dress for my best friend's wedding and try to jigger it onto something else to make an ornament. Possible, attach it to my graduation tassel.

The Post Thanksgiving Cool Down and Warm up:

In some ways, I already have an ornament for this year, which is also an ornament for my whole past. For Black Friday. I spent the entire day cleaning out moderate mountains of mementos, books, and toys from the last thirty to forty years of my family's lives. In the purge was almost as brutal as the many years of dust were to my lungs, but I did keep a little lamb ballerina that I have had for years. It's from my time when I transitioned from a girl who loved frilly tutus and the prettiness of ballet, to one who beamed about how much blood could fill her pointe shoes before she had to stop dancing. It also reminds me of the cleaning out itself - of the fact that I am at a major transition of my life that involves letting go of much of the past to embrace the present. So I may just attach the brooch to the lamb and call it good.

So while the oil of insanity simmers and prepares to erupt from the pot of December into the face of our holidazes, I am ready to ever so tentatively and perhaps foolheartedly say to Christmas and all its attendant rites and rituals: Bring it On! And while you're on the way, could you bring me a double decaff skiny peppermint eggnog mocha with a heaping side of nutmeg and cloves and maybe a caramel covered apple slice encrusted in peanutbrittle? Let's get this holiday spirit going already.