25 Days of Christmas

A Very COVID Christmas

Obviously like for many of us (though sadly not enough of us), this Christmas season looked very different than Christmases past. Although it’s not one I would necessarily want to repeat, I also found a lot of things to take joy in.

There were not the usual parties and get togethers that happen this time of year, but I appreciate how my friends got creative to come together and celebrate in new and interesting ways. One of my friends hosted an online holiday murder mystery. Having done some of these murder mystery parties in person I wasn’t sure how it would translate to online, but it worked pretty well. I even figured out who the murderer was! A different group of friends did a couple of online Christmas movie nights where we watched White Christmas and Home Alone over text together.

We also had our 17th annual Winter Wonderland party that we have with a group of friends every year. Back in the day we used to rent out the upper room at Max’s. Then once there were a lot of kids in the group meeting at a bar became untenable so our friends started hosting at their house. Then this year we had to move online. Our friends put together a slide show of past parties. It was fun to look back at the early years and see us and all our kids grow up. The other benefit to doing this party online was that some friends who have left Baltimore over the years were able to drop in and join us as well!

I usually bake a ton of Christmas cookies in December and give them away as gifts. I was obviously still able to enjoy this tradition, though due to mail issues I didn’t mail anything out this year worried that the cookies wouldn’t be any good by the time they got there. In the past few years since they moved to Baltimore I’ve also been baking and decorating Christmas cookies with my niece. Obviously this year we couldn’t get together to bake, but we each baked cookies on our own and did a little sidewalk exchange of cookies and presents. She did an excellent job on her own.

I wasn’t expecting to spend any part of the holiday season with my family. We have been super careful the entire pandemic and so were definitely not traveling or getting together with anyone in-person inside. My parents against my preference travelled from Arizona to my sister’s house in New Jersey. Even though I haven’t seen any of them since last Christmas we were not going to drive up and join them. However, on the Monday before Christmas my sister and my mother drove down to surprise us with a quick visit. They only stayed for about an hour and half and we sat outside in masks socially distanced and visited for a little bit before they turned around and drove back. It was a really nice surprise and it was great to see them. I look forward to some day hopefully in the not too distant future when I can see the rest of my family too.

Actual Christmas was quiet with just me and my husband. It’s the first time in my 20+ years of adult life where I have spent Christmas in my own home. I’ve always traveled to somewhere else either to visit my family or my husband’s family. Although I missed spending the holiday with family there was something nice about spending Christmas in my own house and trying my best to continue some traditions while creating some new ones of my own. Though I guess they probably can’t be called traditions if I never do them again.

On Christmas Eve I attended the Christmas Eve service at my church for the first time ever since I’m always traveling, though it was online. My main goal was to continue the tradition of eating shrimp cocktail on Christmas Eve. When I was a small child growing up in Georgia my parents had a Christmas Eve open house party every year. There were always two standard things that they served along with other appetizers, shrimp cocktail and a cheese ball. After we moved away when I was in middle school and they stopped having that party we continued eating shrimp cocktail on Christmas Eve. The cheese ball fell by the wayside, which is fine with me. I never really liked those things anyway. One year when I was first living in Baltimore and working at Barnes & Noble wasn’t able to fly home until after I got off work on Christmas Eve so I missed hanging out with my family that night and eating the shrimp cocktail with them. When I got there my mother told me that my grandma wanted her to bring the shrimp cocktail to the airport for me. My mom said she didn’t but it was in the fridge for me when we got to the house. My husband is a vegetarian so he won’t eat it, but I cooked up 4 little shrimp just for me to eat along with some other little appetizers for our Christmas Eve dinner. We also Zoomed with my family and opened our Christmas presents together and finished off the night watching It’s a Wonderful Life.

Christmas Day was equally quiet, but also was a lovely, peaceful day. I know that orange rolls for breakfast on Christmas morning is a tradition in a lot of families. It never was in ours, but it always sounded like a tradition I wanted in on. So this year I made it happen for myself and made some orange rolls for breakfast. I also discovered that I actually really like egg nog this year. I didn’t really think that I did, but in my quest to be as festive as possible I decided I should buy some and figured out that I actually really like it. I’m definitely going to limit myself to one little quart of it though because it is not good for you at all. My husband and I opened the rest of our presents from each other and from his family. He was even super proud of himself because I made some off-hand comment about there never being anything in my stocking without knowing that he had already stuck a little something in mine for me. So I even had a little stocking present from Santa this year.

My family has never had a set meal for our Christmas dinner, so unlike at Thanksgiving where I wanted to make all our traditional Thanksgiving food for just the two of us I didn’t feel compelled to make anything in particular. I just knew I wanted it to be simpler than all the food I made at Thanksgiving. I settled on making an individual beef Wellington for me, a butternut squash Wellington for my vegetarian husband with a side of garlic mashed potatoes and roasted green beans and almonds. My husband ordered a lovely little floral centerpiece from our local florist and we had a beautiful Christmas table. We finished off our Christmas watching Wonder Woman 1984 while eating popcorn and pecan pie.

While none of this is how I would have expected to spend this Christmas at the beginning of the year it also had many quiet moments of joy and peace. I know for many this was a Christmas of unimaginable loss, struggle, and hardship. I am beyond grateful for all the blessings I have. As we finish out this impossibly hard year I wish everyone a brighter 2021.

Advent in the Time of COVID

Usually the weeks leading up to Christmas are a whirlwind of activity. There are so many holiday related things I try to cram in every year including the Hampden Christmas parade, multiple annual holiday parties, baking Christmas cookies, Christmas shopping, and usually a couple of theatre performances plus whatever else might come along. That’s in addition to heading off to some other state for about a week to spend the holiday with either my family or my husband’s family.

This year aside from baking some Christmas cookies and doing a little online shopping none of that is happening. It’s obviously sad because these are all things I look forward to every year and bring me a lot of joy. Instead of spending the next several weeks ruing over the fact that I’m once again missing out on things due to COVID, I want to let this advent season be a time of rest, reflection, and anticipation.

Advent is all about waiting and expectation, but it is also about waiting on the unexpected and not having things turn out like we planned. Before Jesus the Israelites were expecting a savior to come down and overthrow the government that was oppressing them. What they did not expect was that their savior would come in the form of a baby who would grow up not to overthrow an earthly kingdom but to create a heavenly one while subverting many of the things they held to be true. He called them to be servants and to care for the poor and the marginalized. What they were anticipating did not look like what they were expecting.

Recently while we were all glued to social media and the internet waiting for the 2020 presidential election to be called I threw out a question on Facebook to have a little fun. I asked people to name something that used to bring them great joy but that people younger than them would never understand with the example of discovering a hidden track on a CD. The interesting thing that I found was that the majority of the responses people gave were based on anticipation for all kinds of things like not knowing who was at your door or calling you, waiting to develop photos to see what actually turned out, actually finding a new release movie in Blockbuster, standing in line to buy concert tickets, waiting to hear your favorite song the radio, and so much more. So much of our lives these days revolves around receiving instant gratification. We have forgotten that there can be great joy in waiting and anticipation.

This advent and Christmas season more than any other is all about the waiting and anticipation. We are all eagerly awaiting a time hopefully in the not too distant future where our lives will return to some semblance of normal. So this season while we’re all waiting I hope we can learn to wait in hope and eager expectation but not necessarily for the way things used to be. Let this be a time where we can stop and reflect on the future that Jesus came to create not one of earthly kingdoms but one of social justice and servanthood where we are focused on caring for the least of these while on this earth but also anticipating the heavenly kingdom he is preparing for us.

2019 Christmas Ornaments

As I’ve mentioned here before I collect Christmas ornaments as souvenirs. I think they are the perfect souvenir because they don’t take up a ton of room, they’re useful, and when I pull them out every year I get remember all the great trips I’ve taken. In general they’re also pretty easy to find and keychains will work as a stand-in in a pinch. These are the ornaments I added to my collection in 2019.

  1. Rock & Roll Hall of Fame – I picked this ornament up when I went to Cleveland for a conference this past spring. The conference reception was at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which I of course loved. I actually wound up buying this ornament in the airport because the line in the museum gift shop was out of control. It would have taken me at least an hour. I didn’t want an ornament that bad. Luckily the airport provided and I managed to get one, though not the one I had picked out in the museum gift shop.
  2. Hogwarts’ Express – I got this ornament during our trip to Orlando this past February. Obviously it came from inside Harry Potter World in Universal Studios.
  3. The Greek Theatre – I had to substitute a key chain for an actual ornament for The Greek. They had a little kiosk that sold The Greek merchandise where I bought this. There was actually a Christmas ornament listed on their price list, but there wasn’t one on the shelf so they keychain sufficed. I tried to pretty it up a little with a gold bow.
  4. 2019 Mickey and Minnie – This one as you may have guessed came from the same trip to Orlando where I got the Hogwarts ornament. This one I got in Disney World. Way back when we got married our friends bought us a Just Married ornament from Disney World that broke when our tree fell over a few years ago. Not surprisingly they no longer have that same ornament a decade later, and I didn’t want to replace it with a different wedding ornament. So I bought this one instead. I thought it fit my new souvenir ornament rule in that if possible I will only buy something non-breakable because see above story about the tree falling over and broken ornaments. I was obviously wrong about this ornament being something that wouldn’t break easily because I must have not hung it on a sturdy enough branch for its weight and it fell down the first night and their arms where they’re holding hands broke off. I managed to super glue them back on, but I also managed to superglue myself to a paper towel and also get super glue on my great-great grandmother’s ring. I’m hoping if I take it to a professional jeweler to clean they can get it off. At least if they can’t most of it is on the inside of the ring where you can’t see it.
  5. The St. Louis Arch – I bought this one when we went to St. Louis for my cousin’s wedding party in October.
  6. Maryland – The Maryland shaped ornament was one of my anniversary gifts for this year. It’s cut out of stainless steel and steel is the 11th anniversary gift.

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2015 Ornament

When I was a kid my parents always added an ornament to our Christmas tree for each year. Sometimes it was a home made ornament, sometimes it was from a trip, or sometimes it was for an event like the Red Sox winning the World Series for the first time in forever. I assume they still do it, but I’m not there to put up the tree anymore so I don’t know.

I liked that idea, so I started doing it myself when I got married. For the most part aside from the very first one which is a first Christmas together ornament, all the rest are ornaments from trips. I find that ornaments are great souvenirs as well since I’ll actually get use out of them again and every year when I put the tree up I get to remember all the fun places I’ve been.

This past year it seems like we didn’t travel as much at least not to places outside of our normal goings like to Arizona, New York, and Rhode Island to visit family. We did go to California together, but because that was a trip to visit my husband’s parents and me going to a conference in San Francisco where we also stayed with friends it really didn’t cross my mind to pick up an ornament while we were there.

The one trip we did go on was to South Carolina. We took a beach trip to Isle of Palms, which is outside of Charleston. I did pick up an ornament at a Christmas shop in Charleston. If possible I try to get something hand made locally and not just something made in China. I found this little grass ornament made there, but it’s obviously not something that either had the year already on it or something I could add the year too. Good luck in ten years remembering that was my 2015 ornament without the year written on it.

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While we were in Isle of Palms I managed to collect a ton of sand dollars. I found more sand dollars on that trip than I have in the rest of 37 years on this planet. I decided in order to have an ornament with the year on it I could make one of them into a Christmas ornament. Our trip was in May, but I finally just finished making it last night.

Most if it was procrastination. Obviously I had many months to work on this before December hit, but I didn’t and then there were a lot of steps that involved doing a little bit of something and then not being able to proceed until the next day so it took about a week.

First I had to bleach it. I never did get it as white as I wanted, but I also didn’t want it to disintegrate into dust, which I heard can happen if it is bleached too long. Then I had to wait for it to dry. Then I used a glue water mixture to harden it. That took two days because I had to do one side each day and let it dry in between. Ditto for the glitter glue I painted it with. Then finally I was able to put the writing on it. Then I waited a day and glued a hook on the back. Then finally this morning I tied the ribbon on it and hung it on the tree. None of the steps took that long themselves, there was just a lot of waiting involved. Now it can hang on my tree for the three days before I take it down.

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Best Christmas Commercial Ever

The past few years I have done a 25 Days of Christmas thing where I’ve counted down my favorite Christmas songs and Christmas movies. I’m not entirely sure what my theme would have been for this year if I had time, but I did not. With Thanksgiving so late this year we are only around for 2 weekends before Christmas and there just didn’t seem to be enough time to get things done let alone dedicate time to make sure there was a blog post to put up every day. Of course spending the first 4 weekdays of December in jury duty and then coming home to do work that I couldn’t do during the day because of said jury duty also limited my ability to think about Christmasy things. Maybe if I had started way ahead and drafted up a bunch of stuff in November I could have done it, but I didn’t so here we are.

I didn’t want Christmas cheer to be totally absent from my blog this year though, so I present to you the best Christmas commercial ever made. I am sure you will agree it’s the Hershey Kiss ringing bell ad. I just looked it up and apparently the ad has been around each Christmas since 1989. I can’t think of a single other commercial that has essentially remained unaltered and returned every year. There’s some other Christmas ads that stick around a few years or get remakes of some sort like the Folgers one that many people think is creepy though I don’t. This ad is perfect though. It’s simple. It completely evokes the season, and it is made such that it can be the timeless classic that it has become. As long as Hershey’s doesn’t change what a Hershey’s Kiss looks like there is no reason this ad can’t run forever. There are no crazy fashions or things that will begin to look outdated. It’s perfect. So kudos to the ad execs that came up with this one. You done good.

It’s a Wonderful Life

Ok, so it seems kind of cliche to end my countdown to Christmas featuring my favorite Christmas movies with It’s a Wonderful Life, but it really is my favorite Christmas movie. I remember the first time I saw it I was in fifth grade and they showed it to us at school on one of the days before Christmas break when you don’t wind up doing much of anything actually school related. I can’t say that I liked it then. Ew, boring black and white film. Yuck. Give me a break I was only 10 years old. As I got older and watched the movie again (and again and again) since once upon a time before NBC was annoyingly able to claim sort of rights over the film you were able to find the movie playing on tv almost any time of day any day of the week during December, I developed a great love for it. Don’t we all wish we could now the things we’ve done to touch others lives? For some reason one of my favorite scenes is towards the beginning of the film when George and Mary are walking home from the dance and singing Buffalo Gals. Unfortunately I couldn’t find that scene on YouTube so I went for the old standby ending, which is wonderful too. It still makes me tear up every time I see it. Merry Christmas everyone!

When Harry Met Sally

Ok, so I’m cheating a little with this one. I actually think of When Harry Met Sally as more of a New Year’s movie than I do a Christmas movie because of the final scene. There is a little bit of Christmas stuff in it, but honestly I don’t associate it with Christmas that much. Since the holidays are only a week apart I’m still counting it as part of the Christmas season. Plus it’s my blog so I can do whatever I want.

When Harry Met Sally is still one of my favorite romantic comedies. The first time I ever watched it I was totally not supposed to. We had a copy on VHS when I was growing up but because it was rated R my sister and I weren’t allowed to watch it. At some point after my sister and I were old enough to stay home without a babysitter we watched it when my parents went out and left us home alone. Sneaky kids.

Meet Me In St. Louis

Meet Me in St. Louis isn’t much of a Christmas movie either, but it will always be one of the best Christmas movies to me because it gave rise to my favorite Christmas song, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. The original version of the song as sung by Judy Garland in the movie contains the original and much better lyrical phrase “until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow” instead of the far inferior replacement lyric that doesn’t convey near the amount of import “hang a shining star upon the highest bough.”

A Very Brady Christmas

A Very Brady Christmas is horribly cheesy as pretty much all things Brady are, but I absolutely love this movie. The other year I recorded it on our DVR and then never had time to actually watch it during December. I think I wound up watching it in February or something because even though I’ve seen it a dozen times I couldn’t stand to delete it without watching it yet one more time.

Steel Magnolias

Again Steel Magnolias is not a Christmas movie per se, but there are some prominent Christmas scenes particularly at the beginning of the movie that make it somewhat of a Christmas movie in my mind. I unfortunately couldn’t find the clip I was looking for online, so I’m just embedding the trailer for the movie instead.