Merriment, or else!

I snagged this from SamuraiFrog, because if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s snagging quizzes for the blog. Except for the dirty quizzes. Because those are, well, dirty. Ick!

Favorite traditional Christmas song: I love Christmas songs, the old ones, that is. “Angels We Have Heard On High” is a favorite, and it’s also The Daughter’s favorite. (In fact, at her very first Christmas church service, when she was all of six months old, when that one got to the melismatic “Gloria” part, she noted everyone around her singing and joined right in.) “Hark I Hear the Angels Sing” is great. Each year, the service we attend at our current church ends with “Silent Night”, sung by the congregation in candlelight, with no organ accompaniment; it’s moments like those that put me in touch with The Mystery.

And why stop at vocal music? In my college years, the orchestra’s Christmas program always included Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite and Anderson’s Sleigh Ride, both of which are dear favorites of mine. And there’s the genius of Vince Guaraldi’s music for A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Favorite contemporary or modern Christmas song: I’ll define this fairly loosely, with “Modern” meaning, “written since 1900” or thereabouts. That said, I adore “The Little Drummer Boy”. I just love that song to pieces. And yes, the definitive version for me is that wonderfully corny Bing Crosby-David Bowie duet. That thing makes my heart melt. I do like “White Christmas”, although it’s kind of ubiquitous this year. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is a bittersweet gem of a song, but the original version, the one sung by Judy Garland, not the one with the lyrics altered for Frank Sinatra. (Although that one is Sinatra, which is always fine as that goes.) “Do You Hear What I Hear” is always lovely. Bing Crosby was a great singer of Christmas music, I’ve found. And call me crazy, but I love “Feliz Navidad”.

Least favorite Christmas song: I’ve added this question to the original, because you can’t love all the Christmas songs that are out there, can you? So, that said: I hate “Carol of the Bells”. I just hate it. I’ve never heard a rendition of it that I liked. With respect to SamuraiFrog, I can’t abide that Chipmunks song, either. Or “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth”. Or “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”, because all I can think of is, what if the kid had come into the bedroom fifteen minutes later.

Christmas song that makes you cry: Any of them, if I’m in the right mood.

Real or artificial tree: It used to be real, but we received an artificial tree as a gift a few years back, and since then, that’s what we do. We get the pine smell by burning pine candles and incense.

Favorite Christmas edible treat: Decorated sugar cookies. Caramel corn. Chocolate. English toffee. Peppermint ice cream. Christmas is a time of wonderful food.

White lights or multi-colored: White, although I like multicolored too. And you have to have lots of lights. Nothing’s worse than a tree with not enough lights. On a lighting-related tangent, one of our family traditions (inherited from The Wife’s family) is that after our Christmas Eve service, we drive around looking at the lights on all the houses for a while before going home to presents and family together-time. Also, there’s a church in Ellicottville, NY that has in its yard a white marble statue of the Virgin Mary. It’s a very simple statue, not gaudy or ostentatious in the way that many such things are. They don’t do it anymore, to my knowledge, but they used to light that statue up during Advent with a pair of blue floodlights. It was among the most gorgeous things I have ever seen.

How many Christmas parties will you go to this year: One, it seems, at The Wife’s workplace. I like Christmas parties and wish I got to attend more of them.

Favorite act of kindness to perform during this season: The best ones are the small ones, I think.

Favorite sounds of Christmas: Music. Pots and pans in the kitchen. The tearing of wrapping paper, followed later by the sudden snappings and rustlings as the cats attack the torn sheets that litter the floor. The Daughter’s squeal of “This is it!” when she opens the gift she really wants. And silence.

Favorite things to wear: I made a red and green sweatshirt last time I did tie-dying; I like to wear that a lot in Christmastime, along with various combinations of red and green. (Under the overalls, of course.)

Favorite Christmas movie/TV special: Of course, A Charlie Brown Christmas; Linus’s recitation of Luke chapter 2 may be the single best animation voicing ever. I also like Rudolph, although not as much as Charlie Brown. (I have to admit that I’m not a fan of the Grinch.) I actually liked The Polar Express, and I didn’t hate the motion-capture animation, either. Love, Actually takes place at Christmastime, although I’m not sure I’d consider it a “Christmas movie”. Ditto Lethal Weapon and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I recall Christmas viewings of Holiday Inn, with certain family members of mine, after several beers, waxing indignant over the inherent insanity of casting Bing Crosby as a romantic lead.

I honestly don’t like It’s a Wonderful Life, and in an embarrassing admission, I’ve never seen A Christmas Story.

Favorite Christmas episode of a TV Series. I’m adding this question, too. The Christmas episode of My So-Called Life is amazing, as is the one from the first season of Once and Again. There’s the Seinfeld episode where Kramer becomes a department store Santa and starts telling kids Communist propaganda. And yes, the Brady Bunch episode where Cindy asks Santa to give Mommy her voice back so she can sing in the Christmas church service. The brilliant Millennium‘s second season episode “Midnight of the Century” is amazing. The first season of The Wonder Years, where Kevin searched for the perfect gift for Winnie Cooper, was terrific. And while Friends had a lot of fine Christmas-related episodes, the one where Ross dresses up as “the Holiday Armadillo” in an attempt to get his Christmas-focused son interested in Hannukah is still one of the funniest TV episodes I know.

Eggnog or hot chocolate: Hot chocolate. I do like eggnog, but nobody else in the family does, so I rarely have it. Of course, hot chocolate mixed with coffee or a shot of espresso is best.

Favorite Christmas book: Huh. I genuinely can’t think of one, other than Christopher Moore’s The Stupidest Angel.

Christmas books on my “to read” list: None that I know of, although I suppose I should re-read A Christmas Carol one of these years. I haven’t read it since eighth grade.

Peppermint or cinnamon: Both. Two of my absolute favorite flavors.

What’s on the top of your tree: An angel with lights.

Traditional Christmas meal growing up: A turkey dinner, virtually identical to our Thanksgiving meal. These days we seem to have ham a lot, because I’m always in the mood for it. (Except for a few years back when The Wife got sick at Christmas and wasn’t in condition to cook, so I whipped together a pastitsio and we had our “big meal” a few days later when she was better.)

Online shopping or traditional “go to the store” shopping: Both. For things I know I’m not going to be able to get in a store around here, I go online. But I love to shop in real stores. Christmas shopping at Vidler’s should be legally required of every Erie County resident.

Something you received as a Christmas gift as a child that you still have: A nesting doll in the shape of a sailor, with his wife and kid inside. I got that in first grade.

How many Christmas cards you have mailed so far: None. I am so bad at getting cards out to the people who don’t read this blog. Ugh. There’s one dear old friend of mine – two, actually, they’re married to one another, I played trumpet at their wedding – who always send us a card, but whom I never send anything. Wow, I’m a horrible person. I think I’ll send her the link to this blog right now. Be right back….

Favorite source for Christmas ideas: You mean, how do I decide what to get people? I just kind of wander about until I think of something and a person to go with it – “Hey, ____ might like that!” That sort of thing.

Coordinated/themed or hodge-podge tree decorations: Hodge-podge. I find themed Christmas trees a bit disturbing.

What’s on the top of YOUR Christmas wishlist: I don’t really have a Christmas list this year. I just want some happiness for my family.

Roles you’ve played in Christmas plays/programs: I was never in a Christmas play or program as such. My college had a yearly Christmas musical program that involved each of the three major musical ensembles, so I sat in the trumpet section thereof.

Wrapping paper or gift bags: It depends; I tend to do both to a small degree. I also like to hide presents inside other presents: boxes within boxes, something tiny inside a nifty leather pouch, that sort of thing. (And when giving one’s wife a new pair of overalls, the bib pocket is an ideal place to hide jewelry!)

When do you put up the tree: When we get around to it, really. We’d love to have it up earlier, but we usually have to wait until work schedules align so that we’re all home some night. Our tree still isn’t up for this year, sadly enough. The earliest I think we ever put it up was two years ago; we had it up a week or so after Little Quinn’s death, just a few days into December.

When do you take the tree down: When we feel like it. Maybe we tend to put it up late so we compensate by taking it down late (we’ve been known to have it up as late as the first week of February). I don’t really understand the impulse some folks have to rip it down within a day of Christmas ending. A Christmas tree is a beautiful thing; why remove something beautiful that quickly? I may not be wild about stores having Christmas merchandise for sale in October, but I have no problem with Christmas lights being up that early.

Do you have a nativity scene: Yes. It’s a pretty standard affair. We also have a number of Christmas ornaments that depict the Nativity.

Hardest person to buy for: Nobody. Gift-giving became a lot easier with the advent of gift cards and my shift in gift-giving philosophy to giving stuff that reflects my tastes rather than the receiver’s. I like to give copies of books and music that I love, for instance.

Easiest person to buy for: The Daughter, unless she’s asking for something freakishly expensive. (She still believes in Santa, so shhhhh!)

Worst Christmas gift you ever received: Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but I don’t recall receiving any gifts that I hated or were sheer crap. I don’t remember it, thankfully, because I was only two at the time, but apparently I received a pair of Ernie slippers from my sister and I would have nothing to do with them. So began a lifetime of sibling hostility that only ended when we took up lightsabers and…OK, that didn’t happen. But it’s amazing how guilty you can be made to feel for stuff you don’t remember doing, especially when you have a perfectly good reason for not remembering it, as opposed to not remembering it because the incident involves a large bottle of bourbon!

When do you start shopping for Christmas: I used to start really early. Like, October early. In recent years, I’m scrambling late in December. I’ll be finishing my shopping this week, for instance. Ugh. I hate waiting that long.

Have you ever recycled a Christmas present: Nope, unless you count the bottle of liquor that I received at a work party one year. I don’t remember what brand it was, but it was something I didn’t care for so I toted it around for years until a couple of guys helped us with out last move. These guys were good guys, but they were the type of fellows who would drink anything you handed them. Sure enough, they were gleeful when we handed them twenty bucks and that bottle of whatever-it-was.

Travel at Christmas or stay home: We stay home, although we don’t rule out traveling someday. Sadly, it’s now becoming tradition that at some point Christmas day we drive out to Little Quinn’s grave.

Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer: Yes. I could do it here, but even if I did, you could just haughtily suggest that I Googled them.

Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning: Christmas eve, after church and our annual “drive around and look at lights”. We find that opening Christmas eve makes Christmas day a lot less hectic. We do keep a couple of The Daughter’s gifts in reserve to be “from Santa”.

Most annoying thing about this time of year: Hmmmm, tough one. Sanctimonious “more Christian than you” types who kvetch about the “war on Christmas”. (A special subset thereof is people who whine about how we can’t put Nativities on the town park or whatever. You want to put up a Nativity? Put it on your own lawn.) People who grunt about how much they hate Christmas, for no good reason. People who let their internal meanness show anyway. People who drag their kids on long days of shopping and openly yell at their children in the stores.

What I love most about Christmas: Snow. Quiet. Food. Light. Music. Good wishes, shared among friends. Bells. Cats in the wrapping paper. Red, green, silver, gold. Hugs. Family. Love. Luke, chapter two (and Linus’s recitation of part of that book thereof in A Charlie Brown Christmas, surely the greatest single voiceover in animation history).

I tag everybody! Huzzah!!!