Santa Claus ★ North Pole ★ Merry Christmas!

Some cool stuff and who knew Santa has e-mail?

I can’t wait to try this crockpot recipe for hot buttered rum next month! I just wish I could invite you all over to share it.

We don’t have ours up yet, but will probably get it up this weekend.

J didn’t want to get one because of the mess, but he’s being overruled. I love having a Christmas tree. When I was little, I’d turn on the tree lights and just lay under it and stare at it for hours. Our tree was always decorated with a random, eclectic assortment of ornaments, accumulated through my and my brother’s childhood. Some of my favorites were ones that I had made over the years in school — little crosstitch stockings or wreaths. We had several strings of colored lights — different sized-bulbs, some flashing, some not.
My mother always insisted on tinsel. I’m not a big fan of the tinsel, though. I also liked these snowflakes made out of straw or thin pieces of bamboo that we received as a gift one year. My mother began collecting glass spindles to be used as ornaments. They are quite beautiful.

Some years, we would go out in the country to a Christmas tree farm and tromp through the fields, looking for that tree that was meant just for us.

Since his parents divorced when he was little, I think J’s Christmas memories are mostly of deciding who he had to spend the holiday with and shuttling back and forth between his mom and his dad’s families, neither totally his own.

So, we made a deal. I told him that we were having a tree without question this year and that I could either go out and get some cheap-ass artificial tree now OR we could get a live tree again this year and I could shop the sales for a decent artificial one for future years if you continues to be averse to live ones. He opted for this scenario. Yay!

The first year we were here, we got our tree at the Moravian Church around the corner. Looking for a better deal, we got a small tree last year out of the lot at the grocery store. This year, I think we will go to a lot that is being run by a local non-profit organization. (I’m on a mission to make choices that “give back” first to the local community — some of the stuff we do at church, etc. benefits those in need internationally, but we have people with tremendous need right here, too.)

Anyway, I’m hoping to start putting other decorations up this week — I plugged in our Moravian star tonight and set it up on the timer to stay on for a couple of hours every night. Can’t wait to wrap our banisters with garland and lights. And my mom gave Daniel a Christmas bear that glows with fiber-optic lights which change color. Tacky, no doubt, but the babes love it, so we do too.

And hanging the stockings on the mantle. We need to add another one for Mr. A, as it is his 1st Christmas. (He only missed it last year by four days.)

So, tell us about your tree. Or tell us what your favorite decoration or thing to decorate is.

Saint Nicholas ::: Discovering the Truth About Santa Claus

I hate to bring this here but it IS a Christmas blog, and this IS a Christmas issue.

Two words: Santa Claus.

I’m just not sure where I stand with him – not in terms of whether I’ve been naughty or nice (and I’m not asking for suggestions here, thanks), but in terms of what I will tell Kal about the jolly old man with a white beard.

I’m not really worried about it this year – Kal is too young to do the whole Santa thing. Although as I balanced him on my knee next to the Yankee Candle Santa a couple weeks ago, I did worry that my 18 month old might be mysteriously relating Christmas to the smell of vodka when he’s 18 years old.

I’m sure you’re not surprised by that cynicism, especially if you are familiar with my Scrooge-like distaste for all things related to Elmo, Disney, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck (and hey, might as well throw Walmart into that mix ).

When I sum it up that way, it almost sounds un-American to be cynical about Santa Claus, doesn’t it? And maybe there’s some truth to that. I’m pretty sure Danny’s parents didn’t do the Santa thing while growing up in Portugal, and Danny himself will tell you that Santa was never a huge focus in his Christmases when he was a kid.

And clearly my childhood couldn’t have been that typical if it churned out a social deviant like me; I can also attest that Santa wasn’t a huge thing in our house either. I do remember making a list for Santa, leaving out cookies, and listening for footsteps on the roof, but I also remember thanking my parents for the presents that were signed with Santa’s name.

Maybe Santa wasn’t a huge thing for me when I was little because we also had an Advent wreath on our kitchen table to light each morning at breakfast, and Advent calendar hanging on the wall to count down the days to Jesus’ birth, rehearsals for the church Christmas pageant, and then a huge celebration on Epiphany Sunday (about a week after Christmas) when the Wise Men arrived in Bethlehem (actually, El Dia de Los Reyes – The Day of the Kings – is much bigger than Christmas in Latin America). Santa was just something extra, not the focus.

It’s not that I had a bad experience with the whole Santa thing. I just really love Christmas for what it is – a very special time of faith.

And no, I don’t have a bumper sticker on my car that says “Jesus is the reason for the season” or any other Christmas advocacy going on. I just feel a little ill when my eyes are assaulted with images of the fat man in the red suit while there are still Halloween decorations everywhere. I guess I’m rejecting the commercialistic part of it and trying to focus more on the Nativity part of it – which is nothing revolutionary or new of course, but now that I’ve got my own kid, I need to be sure of where I stand.

Like I alluded to before – I see Santa as being part of American culture. But there are lots of things in American culture that I don’t subscribe to, and America’s depiction of Santa Claus feels like it’s going to be right up there with Disney and Walmart.

And Danny loves the idea of telling Kal the truth and having him become “That Kid” who feels the need to blurt out, “Santa isn’t real, you know.” So yes, I do have a partner in cynicism-crime.

But idealistically, I’d like to focus more on Saint Nicholas, Papa Noel, the Magi, and the idea of Christmas tradition and folklore more than the typical mall-Santa mentality.

Still recuperating from the Thanksgiving haze of meal-planning, grocery-shopping, house-tidying, and too much “quality” time with relatives, posts have been a bit . . well. . . non-existant.

So, I actually braved the Black Friday crowds yesterday morning at around 7:30. I was up already and figured I’d try to snag a couple of things on my list. Actually, the only place I went to was the local K-Mart which was selling a portable DVD player for a good price. The DVD player was something on the list for us. We have a 5+ hour car trip over X-mas, so this will preserve the last shreds of our sanity.

That’s all I got, actually. I didn’t want to be out very long because we needed to cook breakfast for our house-guests and J was coming down with a cold. I’m not sure I would have wanted to try to get up at 4:30 to be at places opening at 5:00, but it was kind of fun. Lots of moms or couples in mini-vans and SUVs. That’s who was out and about.

All I did to prepare for my shopping trip was take a shower, find the closest clothes without boogers caked on them, and alert J that I was leaving against his admonitions of “You are crazy!” But not others. There were women with festive X-mas sweatshirts on, matching jewelry, full makeup and perfectly coifed hair. This was clearly an “event” for them.

Since a lot of the stores are running Fri/Sat deals, I went out again this afternoon to several stores. I only ended up getting a gift for my 3-year-old niece (a set of magnetic dolls which you can put different clothes on) and a bedtime book for my 2 -year-old. There were a lot of people shopping, but it wasn’t unbearable.

So, did anyone else go out on Black Friday? What didya get?

Reading Jennie’s white elephant story reminded me of the great gift exchanges that we had with friends in Boston.

There was all sorts of fun stuff included in these swaps. People used this time as an opportunity to unload tacky wedding gifts, to clean out closets, to dispose of unwanted Christmas gifts from previous years and what-have-you. There was enough good stuff to make it interesting as well, so that some things got swiped on every turn.

Bottles of wine. Lottery tickets. Austin Powers videos. A gigantic jar of pickles. Homemade fudge. A No Parking sign. A bowling ball with shoes and bag. A pair of boxers with a bear on the butt that said “Bear Naked.” One of those flapping lobsters that sings and that you hang on the wall. These are some of the memorable gifts.

The first year we participate, I wasn’t sure what to get. At the last minute, I was out shopping and with J’s urging decided to purchase a Tinkie-Winkie doll. You know Tinkie-Winkie, right? The purple Teletubbie with the triangle on his/her head who was rumored to be gay.

Among our friends, there was a guy who was single and had had a string of relationships that hadn’t gone anywhere. No one thought he was gay or anything, but of all people who could have unwrapped the precious Tinkie-Winkie doll, Bruce was who everyone would have thought to be the funniest recipient. And guess who got it. He was a good sport about it, but kind of embarrassed, too. In the end, somebody else took it from him on their turn in order to pass it along to a niece. Bruce was quite relieved.

Good times.

I often miss the staff of the university library where I catalogued (was it really over five years ago?). They became kind of like a family, with, sometimes, the attendant quirkiness and infighting. So eventually, as in every family, the time comes for the offspring to move out.

But there were good times. One of the nicest traditions was the holiday white elephant-style exchange party.

At least in theory.

Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without one humbugger, and, in an act of sheer dumb coincidence, I just happened to bear the brunt secretly three years running. The entire staff knew just what a mule this person is in general, and probably each has their own teeth-gritting story to tell. This is mine.

It’s difficult to find just the right balance in a white elephant gift. You’ve got to juggle the low price imposition, the expected kitsch/humor factor, and at least a little practicability. Considering that, I think did a pretty decent job.

Year one. An impossibly huge ceramic “snack” set, consisting of a soup mug and bread plate festooned with borderline tacky candy canes and mistletoe abounding. The recipient who chose it from the pile made it obvious that it didn’t meet her high white elephant standards. The next person in line was charmed, however, and, as was her higher-number privilege, she “stole” the gift in lieu of opening a wrapped one.

Year two. Oh! I stumbled upon the most adorably-designed dustpan and brush at Target. The brush was a brown squirrel, the business end his bushy tail. And the pan was a green leaf, the handle/”stem” to which the squirrel could quite handily cling. If I hadn’t been so disgustingly poor at the time, I would’ve had one of my own, too (no - I paid nowhere near $30 for mine! Eesh!). In retrospect, I should’ve just given it to myself… because you’ll just never guess who chose my gift yet again. And she was even less thrilled than the year before, proclaiming the gift’s utter ridiculousness loudly and often. I admit, I don’t take criticism of my gifts well, so this repeated bashing was becoming quite a killjoy.

Year three. I’m nothing if not a closet optimist, so I decided to try again. I found a flowerpot breadmaking kit, complete with everything you’d need to bake a small cute loaf. And… well, you can probably see where this is going.

“What is this! Every year, I pick something stupid! I’m not doing this next year.”

Amen, sister. A-men.

I totally wrote this whole thing and Kal deleted it. How charming.

My Christmas shopping is very well underway. Only a couple more things for DH and Daniel, my sis (these have all been decided, just a matter of getting them), and figuring out what mail-order type things to get the ILs.

As you can see, Daniel provides much in the way of elfish moral support: