Category Archives: Festivities

Christmas Music – love it or hate it?

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If economics has taught us anything, it is that if there is an oversupply of a particular good, then the value of additional units of that particular good is low. This probably explains why there is so much bad Christmas music. There is an incredible volume of Christmas music and it seems to grow exponentially each year. Every artist seems to put out a holiday album at some point in their career, distinguished or not. I just searched for Christmas music on Amazon and discovered that there are 17,913 results. Kelly Pickler – remember her, the dim-witted country wannabe-singer from American Idol – has a song on one of those ubiquitous Christmas collections, as does Miley Cyrus. The Pet Shop Boys have an entire Christmas album! As do Bob Dylan and Colin James. Does anyone not have a Christmas album? Wait – John Denver has a Christmas album, and one of the songs is entitled Please, Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas). I can’t decide if that is awesome or depressing.

So it was not surprising to me when a friend mentioned that this – this season – is the worst time of the year for music. I mean, Stevie Nicks singing Silent Night? Am I the only one who thinks that is strange? Although I just discovered that Jim Cuddy sings New Year’s Eve on one of those Christmas collections, maybe I should check that out.

I don’t mean to sound snobbish. I actually really like a lot of Christmas music, although “a lot” could be defined by “about five percent of the Christmas music market”. The songs I like tend not to be sophisticated or edgy in any way and probably is the reason my friend reviles seasonal music. To illustrate, here are my top three songs of the season.

3) The Little Drummer Boy by Bob Seger. I know. I know. Pa-rum-pum-pum-kill-me. But I like the pa-rum-pum-pum-pum. I do. And every year I emotionally recount the song’s meaning to the boys. “The little drummer boy wanted to bring a gift. But he didn’t have one. So he gave a song.” Then I get all choked up as the boys nod politely and say things like, “That sounds like a nice present.” They don’t shake their heads and say “Weirdo” under their breath. At least not yet.

2) Mele Kalikimaka by Bing Crosby. I LOVE this song, and I catch myself singing or humming it nearly constantly throughout the season. I must note that my husband absolutely loathes this song, and he seems to have passed this loathing on to Jake. In fact, I have only to sing the first line to prompt Jake to shriek “MOM! NO! STOP! We are not in Hawaii! We are in Canada! DON’T SING THAT SONG!”

1) Last Christmas by Wham! This is my number one favourite Christmas song. Twenty five years later, this song is still awesome. AWESOME! And – happily enough – no one in my house hates this song so I can listen to it and sing to my heart’s content.

So – what about you? What are your seasonal favourites? Or do you despise the whole genre?

We interrupt this Christmas spirit to bring you colossal bitchiness!

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This dress really wants to go to a party!

I look forward to my husband’s company Christmas party for months. I look forward to dressing up, talking to grown people, and eating food not prepared by myself and which is generally very tasty. I also look forward to the open bar. Months in advance I think about this party, because after all, there is no “stay-at-home mom” Christmas party, and even if there was it would probably just involve Starbucks and our nice jeans.

I even bought a dress for the party! I haven’t worn a skirted article for at least five years, since the appearance of my python-like varicose veins, but in the spirit of “love your body 2009” I actually purchased a dress, which I planned to wear with thick tights and boots to minimize the vein visibility. I was getting very excited.

You can probably see where this is going. Yesterday morning a monster of a blizzard began, complete with white-out conditions and massive drifts of snow, forcing us to cancel our plans. Boo. Around 2:00 yesterday it became apparent that no, we were not going to go, I started sulking and immediately donned yoga pants, a sweatshirt, and gigantic fuzzy slippers. Rob felt sorry for me and offered to watch When Harry Met Sally with me. Score! My favourite movie, which he will never watch due to my incessant need to repeat the dialogue throughout the film. (“They don’t make Sunday”. “Why not?” “Because of God.”)

So that was nice. Then this morning I woke up with a sore throat and headache due to the commencement of a minor cold, and also the general malaise that is associated with the commencement of my “ladies’ holidays”. I felt awful, so I did what any smart woman would do: attempt to make 6 dozen gingersnaps with the kids. Suffice it to say it was a bad idea. I ended up baking only half the cookies, putting the rest of the dough in the freezer for a more appropriate day. But then the kids wanted pancakes for lunch and, due to my guilty feelings for snapping at them more than once, I agreed. I mis-measured several times, burned the first couple, and then shrieked, “IT’S YOUR LUNCH!” in response to Mark’s innocent “What’s that weird smell?” query. So no Mother of the Year awards coming my way today.

Rob got home soon after this fiasco and I went straight to bed, passing out for a solid 90 minutes. I feel somewhat better but now the kids are jonesing to make a gingerbread house tonight! I need to channel my inner Christmas spirit. Help!

"…maybe Christmas – perhaps – means a little bit more…"

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Me, looking at Jake’s school schedule: “Oh, it looks like you will be writing a letter to Santa in class!”

Jake: “Does that mean I will be writing a letter to you and Dad?”

Yes, well. Let’s just say that Jake is feeling a bit confused these days. If you’re four, and you have a brother who is five and is a non-believer, then you will likely get tipped off about the non-existence of Santa earlier than your other classmates. But, if you are in a pre-kindergarten class where everyone is busy writing letters to Santa, mailing letters to Santa, and getting ready for Santa’s classroom visit, the issue may become cloudy for you.

I’ve read a few things in the past couple of days with regards to the de-bunking of the Santa myth and how terribly sad it is when children stop believing. Now, I don’t want to belittle anyone’s belief system here, or ruin anyone’s Christmas spirit, but I don’t really equate the belief in Santa barreling down one’s chimney to bestow gifts and eat cookies with the magic of Christmas. I don’t know. I love the Christmas season as much as the next person, in fact I might even love it more than the next person, but I have to say that it actually didn’t affect me when the boys stopped “believing”.

When Mark first spoke about Santa not being “real”, given his personality, I felt it best to be honest with him. I told him that Santa was something that little kids like to think about until they can understand that Santa is more than just a fat guy in a red suit with a flying sleigh, that Santa means goodwill and generosity and kindness, and that when you do something nice, it is like you become Santa. It’s an explanation I’m more comfortable with than maintaining a myth that I think is beside the point.

Nevertheless, we will hang our stockings and set out cookies and milk on Christmas Eve. Just in case.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

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I am someone who does not like to leave things to the last minute. I like to be organized and on top of things. So, I finish my Christmas shopping in the first half of November, I make and freeze dough for sugar cookies and gingerbread in November, I send all my Christmas cards out on November 30, and on Sunday last, we put up our Christmas tree. I also suggested making a gingerbread house this past weekend, but Rob nixed it. “Shouldn’t you leave something for December?” he asked.

I like not being rushed. The same can be said about Jake. I had to instigate a school-day rule that entails him getting dressed at 8:00, so that if it takes him 30 minutes to complete the task, we still have time to get our shoes and coats on in a relaxed manner. It also cuts down on the amount of deep breathing and gentle encouragement I need to do as I watch him slowly, slowly put his clothes on, then oops, his shirt is backwards, and uh oh, he is having trouble with his socks, and oh dear, his foot is stuck in his pajama bottoms. When we start early I simply leave the room, so as to remain mentally balanced, and come back 30 minutes later to a totally dressed Jake! A miracle! And one that does not require me grinding my teeth and saying, okay, come on, okay honey, JUST PUT YOUR DAMN SOCKS ON.

Where was I going with this?


Oh yes, the Christmas tree. It’s a bit of a Charlie Brown tree, actually. It was a cheap tree that is now a decade old, and every year my husband puts it together and swears a little, but once it’s decorated I just love it. Also – notice how squished it is against the furniture – we cannot possibly have a larger tree. As it is it is reminiscent of Jenga, rearranging our house for this five foot tree.

The downside to being super organized and not waiting until the last minute to do Christmas-related things is by the time Boxing Day comes around I am DONE with the Christmas spirit. It’s all I can do not to pack up every ornament at noon on Christmas Day. My Buddy the Elf persona quickly morphs into a Grinch-like attitude. It’s like, I just want my house back, you five foot tree that has taken over the living room!

So, while I’m still in the spirit, check out a couple cute decorations!

What a sweet little nativity scene, and the little house was the first decoration I bought the year we got married. To symbolize HOME. Awwwww.

I bought this Spiderman decoration this year for the boys. My brother informed me that this is the second most famous comic book cover of all time. I just don’t know what to do with that information, but okay. The boys like it.

A snowglobe! With my name on it! I got one for everyone in the family (except, as Jake disapprovingly said, for Barkley.).

Today it’s snowing and cold and I feel very Christmassy – even if it’s not even December!

November

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November is a dark month. Even when the sun is shining, it is so low in the sky that it is still dark and grey. Every room in my north-facing house is dark, even when the lights are on.

This month has been flying by. I can’t believe it is already the 23rd. We are having an unseasonably warm November, which in Calgary means that the temperatures are soaring all the way up to 6 or 7 degrees, as opposed to 1 or 2. Not that I’m complaining, mind you, any time temperatures are above normal I am happy, but it seems like those couple of degrees are wasted in November. I mean, it’s still chilly, still dark. The sun is setting at 4:30, and rising after 8. December is, of course, darker and colder, but it doesn’t seem that way because of Christmas, and festivity, and my general feeling of goodwill and happiness that accompanies it.

Four children in my neighbourhood lost their mother and, while it is not my story to tell, the tragedy of that has left me low. But I’m not going to talk about that. The feeling of goodwill and happiness, that Christmassy feeling, I needed that feeling this weekend. So I broke my own rule about no Christmas decorations before December. I brought the boxes out of storage and the boys and I put out a few choice decorations.

The pinecones are from my in-laws’ place in the Okanagan. My husband and I gathered them the year my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer, which he beat against all odds. The little balls in the bowl are from my very first Christmas tree after I left home. I didn’t have lights on that tree, and it was odd how many people commented on the fact. I honestly didn’t think that no lights was a big deal, but apparently IT IS. The cute little star snowmen? A woman I worked with once made them for the company Christmas party. She made about 150 of them. Have I ever mentioned that I admire people who are crafty? Because I am the opposite of crafty.


Mark’s favourite decoration is a little train station. Technically it lights up but I have a small fear of fire – and I think that decoration was made in China, so my fear of plugging it in and starting an electrical fire is probably justified. Notice the bowl in the background. The Christmas balls I set in there are from my mother-in-law – old ornaments from the 60’s.


This is my very favourite thing. I bought the creche figurines in Mexico 12 years ago, and I just love them. I always put the angel on the ladder – angels need a little help once in a while. This is also Jake’s favourite.

When something is heavy on your heart, sometimes the best thing to do is find the joy in your life and be thankful for your blessings. And I am so thankful.

Weekend Update

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1. I purchased 250 candies for Halloween, and lovingly made up twenty little gift bags with an assortment of goodies. If we got more than twenty trick-or-treaters, I thought, I would just give out the mini chocolate bars and bags of Sour Kids separately. The boys headed out to trick-or-treat and I stayed home to hand out candy, happily watching a recording of John Cusack (hubba hubba) on Jay Leno. I waited. And waited. I started to feel like some sad little debutante waiting for her date, who had obviously stood her up for a better option. (“He cometh not”, she said.) In the end I had two trick-or-treaters and now I have a plethora of candy with no home. Since trick-or-treaters were in short supply on our block, you can probably imagine the volume of candy amassed by my little pirate and dinosaur, who, technically, was an Allosaurus, not a T-Rex, because he was living in the Jurassic period, whereas the T-Rex lived in the Cretaceous period, just so you know. In addition, two very lovely neighbours actually went out and purchased special large treats just for them! Very kind, especially the neighbour who gave them candy popcorn, which the children have generously shared with me.

2. Another neighbour suggested that kids were not trick-or-treating much this year due to the swine flu, either because they had contracted it or because their parents were wary of them contracting it. If this is true, it is the last straw for me. I have reached saturation point with regards to information about the swine flu. This may or may not include helpful emails from certain people which detail that a) if you contract the flu, we are all going to die, or, alternately, b) if you get the flu shot, we are all going to die. I will write about the flu only if and when I or my family contracts the flu, and then I will simply whine about my symptoms, and NOT about conspiracy theories regarding the government, the pharmaceutical companies, and the sellers of hand sanitizers. I bet you are looking forward to that.

3. In years past, I dreaded the end of Daylight Savings Time, and not just because shortly it will be completely dark at 4:30 pm. I had the kind of children who would wake up at the exact same time every day no matter what time they went to bed, and it would take about a week – a cranky, sleep-deprived week – to adjust to the new time. There is something psychologically very bad about having a toddler wide awake at 4:58 am. “How did your kids do with the time change?” I blearily asked a mom at a playgroup, who subsequently looked at me like I was a little slow on the uptake. “Fine,” she said, “I just put them to bed an hour later and then they slept an hour later.” I looked at her, slack-jawed, like that was the most unbelievable, incredible piece of information I had ever received. But, huzzah! I am now part of that demographic! I put my kids to bed later, and they wake up later! It’s a miracle! They are not waking up at ungodly hours and morphing into crazed, sleep-deprived little goblins! And as a result, I am not a crazed, sleep-deprived, mid-thirties goblin! Hooray indeed.

Happy Halloween

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Arrrrgh, mateys. If ye are sailing the high seas, be sure to guard ye treasure. There’s pirates about!


And if the pirates don’t get you, the dinosaurs will.


I was volunteering for the Pre-Kindergarten Halloween party today, and if I was the sort of person to drink during the day, I probably would have a shot. Or two. It wasn’t that bad. But if you put a class of 21 costumed and wired 4-year-olds in a setting where the activities are “decorate your own cookie”, “pin the nose on the Jack-o-Lantern”, “bowling for witches”, and the sedate, but somewhat tear-inspiring “Halloween Bingo”, well, let’s just say an adult-only beverage would have been nice. However. I do not drink during the day (exception is when I am on vacation at my in-laws) so I will be counting down until bedtime.