I’m interested in hearing about any and all holiday traditions UPers normally engage in and the changes they’re making for WOAT 2020. Also interested in any holiday-related takes, and the grievances you want to air.
Traditions:
A couple of years ago, we switched from being a live Christmas tree family to an artificial tree family. This has added an immense amount of utility to my life. We used to drive out to a tree farm in our minivan, cut down a tree with some stupid dull-bladed saw, then shove the tree into the minivan for the drive home. Then putting it up and dealing with the stupid lights, watering it, and vacuuming all the needles. Now, we’ve got an artificial tree that’s pre-lit, so basically saves us 10 hours of irritating time each year.
We normally make cranberry raisin bread for ourselves and all the kids’ teachers. We’re assuming that no one wants home-prepared food this year, so we’re going to be baking like 8 loaves for ourselves, rather than 30 or so.
We have an Elf on the Shelf that appears every December 1. That’s fine on its own, but what’s annoying is that my wife insists on moving it to a new and funny place each night. And this actually induces stress about trying to be creative and not repeating anything. I blame bullshit internet nonsense for this. Like, sorry, I’m not recreating nonsense like this:
“Noelle” is a recent Christmas movie that is kind of terrible, but also kind of awesome because of Anna Kendrick
Best Christmas Songs (pop category): “Christmas Wrapping” and “All I Want For Christmas Is You”. A tradition in our house is that Christmas season is officially allowed to start the day after Thanksgiving. And it officially starts with me blasting “Christmas Wrapping” throughout the house. Everyone hates this tradition except for me.
Best Christmas Song (classic): “The Christmas Song” (Nat King Cole version)
“Last Christmas” (Wham) is not a terrible song
Egg nog is kind of overrated
Best Christmas special: “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”
Everyone should own a copy of the “A Charlie Brown Christmas” soundtrack (Vince Guaraldi Trio)
The worst song in the history of recorded music is “The Christmas Shoes”. It is also apparently a movie starring Rob Lowe, which makes me think less of him.
Most Christmas cookies are worse than chocolate chip cookies.
Me too, holidays are dumb and being required to spend time with family during some arbitrary dates throughout the year is dumb. I played golf on Thanksgiving this year and I would love to make that an annual tradition (wife won’t go for it though)
Which part did you like the best? When Rick Grimes creepily professes his love to some lady he barely knows who is incidentally his “best” “friend’s” fiance? Or maybe when Colin Firth creepily professes his love to someone he has literally never spoken to, because he can’t, because he doesn’t know her language. Or the one where the prime minister creepily professes his love to his subordinate that he barely knows? The only tolerable storyline is the one where fourth grade jojen, uh, professes his love to his schoolmate, because he doesn’t know what love is and it’s kind of sweet.
Wait it’s all the same storyline and they’re all stunted emotional children except for the literal child? Shit maybe it is a great movie.
I dislike the commercial aspects of the holidays, and the religious aspects too. 15ish years ago I made deals with all my family members agreeing not to buy presents for each other, so I don’t have to worry about gifting BS.
Fortunately for me, Ms Conwoman has repurposed Xmas, and we now celebrate “Reverie”. It’s a week of remembrance and fun. We cook or purchase a different meal each day that reminds us of the past year(the year that we did a Europe trip, we did a different meal each day inspired by the cuisines of places we visited).
The culmination of Reverie week is a day at the beach(San Diego FTW, Cali GOAT!), followed by an evening of great beer, fresh greens, and taking molly while hanging out at home, which includes writing down all of our top memories of the past year: trips, concerts, friend & family events, inside jokes we made, etc.
I try this every year, haven’t been successful. I think I could probably convince my family to go along with it but my wife comes from a family that is obsessed with buying shit and gift giving. They go crazy with that stuff
My family is the opposite of your wife’s. They’re super religious, so they do xmas celebrations, but the gifts aren’t a big deal.
When I was a kid, my mom would wrap a box and put it under the tree with my name on. On Xmas eve I’d open it, and it would have a picture of a shirt that she’d cut out of the Sears catalog. And she’d say, we’ll get you a shirt like that one in a few days at the after christmas sale.
I’m having similar issues with our elf on the shelf. I did it for the fist time last year and my daughter loved it. I had the elf write her a few notes asking her to do small tasks for the elf (design her a new hat, make her a comfy place to hang out, etc) which she was very excited about.
This year, I had the elf return on December 1st with a short note. However, my daughter has learned to write in the last year and is now writing the elf a note every day, so I figure I should respond. Making it worse, I had the elf set up in a small crawl space in my daughter’s bedroom that she had decorated to be her secret hiding place. My daughter decided that it is the elf’s home, so she’s leaving her notes for the elf there. That means I have to sneak in after my daughter is asleep, read her message, write a response, and then sneak back in to leave the response. Luckily she is a heavy sleeper. Trying to figure a way to ease my burden a bit without dampening my daughter’s enthusiasm (its also great as she struggles a bit with writing so good practice for her to write the elf long letters).
Love, Actually is a very funny problematic movie. It is so so so funny to see these horndog men ruin the lives of every woman around them. Yes, very funny. Even going so far as to declare love for your best mate’s wife WHO HE JUST WED YESTERDAY? Yes, very funny. It is! But it’s also terrible.
Otoh, movie watch party schedule for tomorrow is Elf.
We ditched our Christmas tree this year. We have very little space for it in our apartment, AND getting rid of it meant we could finally stop renting a second storage locker.
But, we’ve amassed a sizeable ornament collection from all of our travelling that we want to display. This year, we’ve gotten removable hooks and Christmas coloured yarn, and we’re going to try stringing the yarn through the hooks and hanging the ornaments off it, and see how that works.
People with Love Actually takes, hot or otherwise, should watch the same guy’s About Time. It’s about a dude who uses his ability to time travel to trick one woman into loving him. And that’s it. It’s even worse / better.
Growing up, we had a pretty traditional Christmas. Our family was spread all over the eastern half of the country, so sometimes we would visit various places, other times they’d visit us. Did the whole tree, presents, etc thing. Some years were slimmer than others, which I didn’t really notice back then but looking back I can peg the years when mom and dad were having a little more financial trouble.
Grew up episcopalian, so we had a high liturgical service on Christmas. tbh, modern non-denominational Christmas services that my husband went to when we first got married are part of the reason I don’t even go to church anymore. Nothing could compare to the nostalgia of Christmas services of my youth, which had a brass quartet playing Joy to the World and ended with everyone lighting a candle and singing Silent Night, in between which were the processional of the cross, incense, and communion using real wine…none of that grape juice bullshit. I still can’t drink port without thinking of church.
Now, as adults with no kids, Christmas means two weeks when my husband’s work is closed and we can grab the dogs and take off just about anywhere in our RV and chase the snow. This year we might have to trek all the way up to fucking Montana because global warming sucks.
Movies: Die Hard. The only plot in Love, Actually that is worth anything is of course Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson’s, mainly because it’s realistic and the opposite of the rest of them.
Songs: Last Christmas is awesome, but I’m a child of that era. I still cry when I hear “In The Bleak Midwinter” which is a gorgeous hymn that no one seems to sing anymore.
The last time we did anything remotely Christmas-y was a few years ago when we visited our parents. We still managed to sneak up to Vermont for a weekend and get some skiing in.
Love me some eggnog. I can understand this take if you’ve only ever had a mass produced version like Hood or Southern Comfort. If you’ve got a local farm around you check out to see if they make any. In addition to being a life-long pizza snob, I fully admit I’ve recently become an ice cream and now eggnog snob. The difference when made small and local is noticeable.
Writer/director Richard Curtis once joked that his first cut of Love, Actually was three hours and contained zero jokes.
I felt like I was watching that process in reverse going from The Time Traveler’s Wife to About Time. It’s like someone said okay let’s take this overly long weepy movie and do it all over again, but this time with jokes.
Yes. Read this when it first came out. They meet and fall in love as adults. He has no power over when/where he appears in time, so he just makes the best of it when he appears in her childhood.
Also, does Mammoth not have any snow yet? I saw opened a few weeks back and usually by Christmas they have quite a bit, but I haven’t really looked at conditions reports.
