A CHUD Christmas: 2010

We watch Charlie Brown's Christmas show and Scrooge with Alec Guiness in our house. Christmas breakfast is the big meal for us...we tend to throw everything out there. Pancakes, cinnamon rolls, eggs, sausage, bacon, biscuits and gravy, etc.

I lurv me some Christmas breakfast.

Spike, what is it about Sleepy Hollow that makes it a Christmas film for you? I'm genuinely curious.

There's a raging debate between me and my wife and her family over the best version of A Christmas Carol. I'm an unwavering acolyte of the Alastair Sim version, while her family's traditional choice is the Albert Finney musical version. I just don't see how you can do better than Sim in that role, but oh well, I'm outnumbered.

And in my house, the decorations go up the day after Thanksgiving (or no later than that weekend) and stay up through New Year's Day. As long you're in that window, you're fine by me.

I just think Sim is the most believable Scrooge at both ends of the spectrum. His "I haven't lost my senses, I've come to them," at the end is genuinely moving, because you really buy that he's realizing that at that very moment.

But I don't want to derail this into a Christmas Carol version debate (which I'm pretty sure we've had before).

I love Christmas. But Thanksgiving must pass before I allow myself to jump on to its jolly bandwagon, but once it does, I go mad.

Harry Connick, Jr's Christmas albums go on constant rotation as does Nat King Cole and The Rat Pack.

LEading up to Christmas it's Die Hard, Scrooged, The Ref an A Christmas Story

If it's a Christmas where my sisters and their families are all together at my parents' we'll put all the kids to bed by candlelight, sing some Christmas songs with them, and then the adults will go watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation as we wrap presents and put them under the tree.

Also, back at home, my parents have a wood-burning stove they use to heat the house. All winter long there's a pot of hot wassail sitting on the stove. It's really the best.

On the film front, Gremlins and Scrooged are must watches each Christmas. Also tis the time roll out the Christmas complation albums because we all need a bit of Roy Wood and Wizard on the way to work.

Also since I got married the trip to the Mall on the 23rd to pick up the Luxary hamper and Turkery from Marks and Spencers, complete with last minute presents is a must.

Christ, Cellophane...that sounds marvelous.

We tend to play Manhattan Transfer Christmas CDs as well as Connick. I've also been doing some Brian Setzer Orchestra holiday play because the kids need to have that stuff buried into their souls.

I'm a big fan of arbitrary traditions so every Christmas me and Carly watch Hudson Hawk.

And for all you Americans, Roy Wood and Wizards, I wish it could be Christmas (everyday). It may be a touch tacky but I love it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoxQ4Ul_DME

Now that our daughter is almost old enough to really enjoy it, I'm sure our regularly scheduled activities will change.

However, for me I always watch A Christmas Carol (George C Scott version) every Christmas Eve.

The weekend of Thanksgiving is when we decorate. I have a thing for those little villages - we've got at least 2 in different spots. Must be my god complex.

Thanks. It is. If you're ever in the neighborhood, feel free to drop by. We've got warm wassail waiting for you.

December = 'The Ref'.
Christmas Eve = lutefisk/Swedish meatballs/Scandinavean shit with my in-laws. It'll be interesting to see what happens this year because of my Mother-in-law.
Christmas Day = Huge breakfast, going to a movie, and opening the presents right before dinner. And drinking. Lots of drinking.

This is probably a Southern/Floridian thing, but it's not officially the holidays until I see the Publix Pilgrims commercial. Actually, a lot of the commercials Publix runs for the holidays are pretty well done, if a bit on the sentimental side. Which is probably why they work for the holidays.

and I thought that lutefisk was bad...

I love watching The Last Starfighter, because it used to always be on TV at Christmas when I was just a wee boy. Every few years it gets trotted out on Channel 4 at something odd like 11:25am on a Thursday, but it always reminds me of going out on Christmas Eve for a bit of leisurely last minute shopping with the family before coming home to a master spy getting his head melted in a futuristic cupboard.

Otherwise, much like Mr_Cellophane and Sir Ken respectively, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and Scrooged always go down well.

I'll defend some of their instrumental stuff (especially 'Christmas Eve/Sarajevo') but that's it. Their songs are absolutely wretched tripe.

I've seen them live. Twice. I can assure you that they are deadly serious about this shit.

The first half of their live show is almost unbearable; it's all of their songs, one after another, sung with completer earnestness. Once they come back for their second set, they loosen up and rock out, playing all of the instrumental stuff that you like and actually ENTERTAINING the audience. That first hour, though...ugh.

I have zero desire to own one of their albums or see them live ever again.

The older I get, the more Christmas becomes a favorite holiday of mine and Halloween takes a backseat. I personally have many traditions and watch a slew of movies and listen to tons of music.

Movies: Sim (the best), Scott, Stewart and Muppets Christmas Carols. Elf. Home Alone (This movie is hugely underappreciated I feel). Christmas Vacation. White Christmas. Holiday Inn. A Christmas Story. Die Hard. Gremlins.

Music: Bing all the way. Nat. Elvis. Straight No Chaser. Sinatra (somewhat. I personally find his voice to be quite overrated; attitude? not so much). Williams. Como. Plus, a radio station around here plays christmas tunes for the month of December, nonstop, so I tune in there too.

I love decorating the house on Black Friday. I love spoiling my wife with gifts. I love making my egg nog. I love the snow. I love picking out a tree.

I just love doing and experiencing these things every year.

I'l be going back to Liverpool, usually go out on Christmas eve to the local for a few drinks with old friends I don't see all year, then I'll stumble home and watch Die Hard with my brother as usual before retiring to bed. Lovely.

I believe my local independent cinema is showing some Christmas classics during December, hopefully going to see one of It's a Wonderful Life, Scrooged and Home Alone.Think it would be great to see them with a really appreciative audience.

In addition to the traditional movies (Scrooged, Elf and Christmas Vacation), I also each year must do these two things:

1. Watch "Merry Christmas Mr. Bean" (no one will watch this with me!)
2. Read Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris, particularly the first chapter, Santaland Diaries

I also eat and drink like a pig. Yay!

Christmas traditions around the Eyeball house include:

Beginning to panic right around this time of year: Oh shit, we've gotta go shopping! Oh shit, we've gotta buy, address, and mail a shitload of Christmas cards. Crap! We have to take a Christmas picture to put in the cards! Wait...whose house are we going to again? Where did we go last year? Is your mom going to be in town? Are we getting a real tree again or is this the year we break down and get a fake one? AHHHHHH!

Once the panic subsides, the following things usually happen:
-Buying a tree on Thanksgiving weekend, or sometimes the weekend after, and putting it up pretty much immediately. My kids really like picking out a tree.

-Lights go up on the house around the same time.

-We used to make it a point to do the Trail of Lights at Zilker Park, but last year's anemic display was the last one, at least for now. I'm way more bummed out by its absence this year than I thought I would be. At least they'll still have the Zilker tree - I think the city would face an all-out revolt without that damn tree.

-Drive around and look at lights in neighborhoods around town.

-Curse the Domain shopping center and their fireworks which go off every Saturday night at 8PM in December...riiiiight when we're trying to put our kids to bed. We live within a couple of miles of the place, and can easily see the fireworks from an upstairs bedroom.

-Listen to a ton of the Phil Spector Christmas Album and the Low Christmas Album. If I'm at my parents' house*, they can be relied on to pull out the Bob Rivers comedy Christmas albums at some point too.

-Presents get wrapped at night after the kids are asleep generally in one or two evenings sometime before Christmas.

-No specific movie traditions...try to watch the Grinch, and maybe some version of A Christmas Carol. Usually watch bits of A Christmas Story if we happen to flip past it on TV.

-Everything gets opened on Christmas morning, and we have a huge, sugary breakfast (pancakes and/or waffles, eggs, bacon, etc.) that usually comes when everyone's already cranky, starving, and still groggy. Wheee!

*This year, my parents moved to Houston. This is literally the first time in my life that I've lived more than 20 minutes away from my parents. We're still working out logistics for this year. It's going to be really weird for me not to be able to just pop in multiple times during the next six weeks like we used to.

I have found that home video has sort of killed the excitement over the various Christmas specials. I can throw Grinch or Charlie Brown or Rudolph any time I want, rather than having to wait for it to come on during the season.

We eat a lot, we get drunk a lot and we exchange gifts. Then we go to parties. And maybe end up at the beach watching at the sunrise.

My Xmas movies will be surprising to no one.

Die Hard, The Ref, Scrooged and Batman Returns are pretty much perennials.

This year, I will bring back A Christmas Story, I think. And watch it with my daughter.

I also watch The Simpsons Xmas Special (yes, the original and best one) and the Quantum Leap Xmas episode. (The one from the 3rd season that is basically a Scrooge thing)

Sarah Brightman has a good version of that on her Winter Symphony album. Which I put into the holiday playlist last year. The yuletide playlist includes all the classics of course... Nat King Cole and all that stuff. But I've also got Aimee Mann's terrific Xmas album in there (One More Drifter In The Snow) I particularly like her take on a Christmas album because - in difference to most - it actually has a rather dark tone and captures how I tend to feel around the holidays perfectly.

I also stick some Spanish songs by a great band called Mecano. Hijo de la Luna (because of a general Christmasy feeling the song has) and another one called Un Año Mas - but that one is more appropriate for New Year's Eve really.

There was a Xmas show being prepared this year by the people I did the Rockquiem thing with. It was basically a mishmash of The Lost Christmas with some additional material thrown in (from Twisted Sister's Xmas album, for instance).

I was going to play a father waiting for his daughter to come back. Both my numbers were Trans-Siberian Orchestra songs. One about a music box, which had tons of vocal rolls that would have been fun to get my soul on. And another one where the final refrain is: She's comin' home this Christmas day.

Don't remember the titles and can't be bothered to look. But, since you're a fan, you probably know which ones I'm talking about.

The show was canceled for a number of boring reasons. But it was coming out pretty well.

I'm inclined to agree. But I would be lying if I said they weren't fun to sing.

Christmas songs, in general - carols in particular, are pretty trite when you get right down to it.

But Judas... We are adults. And we can open our presents---WHENEVERWEWANNNT!!!!!

I love this movie so very, very much.

Hate to break it to you, Spike, but if anything your thread has lifted my spirits on this cold, wet and gray November day!

I actually thought about the whole 'holiday' thread issue a few weeks back. Should I start one right after Halloween, like grocery stores with Christmas decorations? I didn't want to look like I was just trying to be 'first' with various event threads. My reason for posting the ones for Halloween 2010 and Labor Day 2010 was simply the enjoyment I get from having a community to discuss such things with, and the fun of designing a logo to go with it

I figured that I'd give other people the chance to post the X-Mas thread, at least as long as they did so before the start of Advent Calendar season. Glad it didn't come to that and you were on top of it! I am looking forward to posting in your thread and I am sure we'll have lots of good times and laughs here

Anyway, I have a funny relationship with Christmas. I love the holiday, and it's iconography. I love the family togetherness and the decorations, the music and the food. The presents can be nice, but they're way down on the list of things that I'd single out as my favorite parts of the holiday. When I look back at my Christmases past, the memories that stick out are family activities, and less the actual unwrapping of presents

Unfortunately though, in recent years there has been some deal of family acrimony, and I've found myself so downtrodden that it's been hard to summon the energy to get into the spirit if the season. I have been living by myself now for the past 1.5 years, and last winter especially it was difficult to find much holiday cheer around my dwelling. I purchased hundreds of dollars of new lights and ornaments for my tree... only to never put them up. My tree stays up year round, and the prospect of taking down all existing lights, checking for dead bulbs, rearranging new ornaments according to my OCD guidelines.. was a truly Herculean undertaking and one that I was feeling less than up to tackling

Anyway, this year I hope will be different. I still have last years decorations, and I will put them up this year instead. My theme for the tree for 2010? 'Sterling Elegance'. It will be a tree with white and gold bulbs only (along with some smaller copper and earth tone ones), and like 500+ white lights

It's going to be rad, I'm pretty sure... I am just still not looking forward to the amount of effort it will take. When it's done I'll get a sense of satisfaction from sharing it with you guy though. Oh, also I take large empty card board boxes and wrap them in expensive wrapping paper so I have a giant pile of 'presents' under my tree. I got an EXCELLENT wrapping paper this year that will compliment my tree perfectly

BTW, just to give you an idea of my Christmas tree art, here is a shot from a few years ago of my work. Please do not judge it based on the fact that a string of lights in the center of this tree is dead.They burned out and it would take too long to replace them. Imagine that it was all lighted evenly when you look at it, because that's how it used to be (BTW that is a second smaller sister tree behind the normal tree):




Other favorite holiday activities around my house: Decorations! At my moms house we have all sorts of decorations we'll put up. She usually get a living tree, and the star that goes at the top? It was made the year I was born out of cardboard and tinfoil! There is a beautiful reindeer ornament made of a golden metal that we put up, and there is a small fight every year to decide who gets to stick him up

My dad has a three wise men set from India, and they all look like little Indian soldiers, it's neat

We have a wonderful display that fills the house with music and dancing: it's called "HOLIDAY WALTZ". It's no longer produced, but it's lovely and I adore it. It has 15 Christmas songs it plays, and 15 regular waltzes. It's wonderfully detailed and all the little people engage in complex dance moves, sweeping loops and twirls



Some of the pieces are now missing (one of the dancing pairs lost her husband in the great war, and now she's a lonely widow so she dances alone), and so sometimes we'll add magnets from the fridge so they can get in on the dancing action. You've not lived till you've seen a watermelon slice dance the waltz! It's a very classy display, IMHO, and they don't really make any like it anymore. We go to TARGET and WALMART every year to see what's being offered, and it's all kind of tasteless and full of fiber optic flashing lights ETC

One of our favorite things to do in the winter time is to put on a recording (we used to use cassettes, now we own it on CD) of Patrick Stewart's one man Christmas Carol spectacular. It's awesome, and anyone searching for the definitive version of ACC need look no further. Stewart does all the sound effects and voices himself, and it's utterly delightful. So much better than the film version he starred in IMHO



We used to use it on car trips to visit my grandfather, but he died two years ago unfortunately so now we just listen to it around the house

Oh, and we make sugar cookies, and I'll post up some photos if I make any that turn out really well. I used to just dip them in icing and eat them, but now I put alot of effort into the decoration

My town hosts a 'Holiday Walk' (formerly the Christmas Walk) every year, and I usually attend. There are sleigh rides, hot coco, caroling, and even sometimes the infamous Coca Cola truck from the commercials shows up. It's decked out in lights and driven by Santa, and I did my first ever public dancing in front of that truck when I was like 12 years old during a dance contest! Santa even drove me home in the truck two years in the row, and seeing the glowing 18 wheeler come up my narrow street must have given my neighbors quite a shock!



OK that's all for now, I'll post up more X Mas traditions as I think of them

Thanks again for the thread, Spike. A merry Xmas to you!

PS I have not gone sledding in many years (though I do ski), and this year I think I'm going to try and sled a giant hill known as "sheep hill", which I've always wanted to do. It's crazy huge and probably dangerous, but it's something I need to do

I've got to say, Kate, that looks like one killer tree, broken light strand and all. I'd proudly display that in my house.

Well thank you so much, Mr Cellophane! It's great to get a compliment like that. I hope this years tree will impress you as well!

PS In case you are interested, here is an album with more shots of my Christmas Tree Art from two years ago:

ASDADAWCLICK IMAGE FOR ALBUM

The older I've gotten the less I care about Christmas. It used to be fun when my parents were together, but since they split and I've gotten older it's gotten kind of depressing.

My daughter's old enough to have some fun with it, but we're too broke this year to buy for anyone but her. We didn't bother putting up a tree last year. It's just a hassle to me.

We dont put ours up until the day before Christmas eve...if not on Christmas eve itself. And we leave them up til new years day. Haha.

This is pretty much a universal truth. It operates on different levels, but it boils down to the same thing.

If you're not careful, Christmas can be a very lonely and sad time.

I lost my grandmother in February, and I've had a hard time with it. It's going to sting not having her around at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I try not to be a scrooge, but I'm on a man-period from about the end of October to the beginning of February

Thinking about it there is a slew of great Christmas songs that i love to hear.
But they all seem to be fromt he 70's and 80's I don't think we have had a great Christmas classic in a long long time.

Shamefully I'd forgotton it, ok, there has been one good tune. But in comparison to the sheer glut of greats from yesteryear the last couple of decades have been very poor, Christmas music wise.

I'm just glad we won't be subjected to an XFactor tune for christmas.

Why is that? I assume the winner will release the usual crappy cover in the week before? Here's hoping for another Rage Against the Machine type campaign.

I absolutely love that The Darkness song has become a Christmas standard already.

Thanksgiving has happened. I allow myself to pass to Christmas now. I love Christmas. I am kicking it off with one of my favorite Christmas movies of all time:

Die Hard.

Word.

Mmmm. I need to break out my copy of Mark Morris' The Hard Nut and enjoy that. What a brilliant piece of work and wonderful way to get into the season.

My sister turned me on this tradition, and it really is a comfortable fit with the whole poor broke college student:I bake cookies and then give them out in small gift bags to friends, family and coworkers. I'll be sending a few through the post to friends, but not as many as I'd like, because postage is a little too expensive for me. Most folks who I can't send cookies to will get cards. All the presents I'll be givng out are handcrafted, either small paintings or embroidery samplers, because again, I'm too poor to buy things.
Most of the cookies are about 3" by 1 1/2", and I'll also be making a batch of candied pecans via a reciple given to me by a professor. Just a little handcrafted way to show people you appreciate them.

Music and movie wise, it's all the classic christmas songs (except that one stupid damned song about the shoes) and movie wise, The Muppet Christmas Carol is the only Christmas Carol I can stand, and Batman Returns. On that thread, I hate A Christmas Carol. I work in the theater building, and having been involved in the art scene one way or the other, it's always the damned Christmas Carol no matter what theater you're at. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

For family gatherings, everything will start out okay, but then interpersonal conflicts start erupting and the tension gets so high by CHristmas Day my mom is either screaming at us for getting her shitty presents or sobbing about how our family hates her. So, bring on the Holidays!

(Also: Spiked eggnog = greatness)

My girlfriend and I just got a little 3ft tree for our house...since we're doing Christmas at my parents' this year we'll be doing a full-sized tree at their house. Her family is coming for the weekend and will be joining my family for Christmas. It will be very nice to have everyone together.

This Yuletide, my girl and I are being rather untraditional, as we'll be waking up Christmas morning in a hut on the beach in the Filipino island of Siquijor...

BTW, I am going to be decorating my tree in the next few days. Unfortunately I put it off only to have my house flood from a burst pipe and now the whole tree thing is that much more complicated

I am also really worried I won't have enough lights, and will have to ask my parents to buy me more which I'd feel bad about

Still though, should have photos in the next few days

PS Caroling... cancelled!

Usually I go to carol at the 1753 House, which is a house made using tools and materials from 1753 (I assume ghosts from the 18th century live there as well). This year? Due to chimney hazzards, it's been cancelled