Tag Archives: holiday

Up on the house top…

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A tiger cub in a Santa Suit
A tiger cub in a Santa Suit (from Emergency Kittens)!
I find it alternately confusing and amusing that some of the most emphatic defenders of keeping the Christ in Christmas want to claim Santa Claus as an important component of the Christian aspect of the holiday. Because among the fundamentalist Christians who raised me, Santa Claus was always a symbol of the secularization of the holiday. Several of the churches I attended as a kid banned images of Santa Claus from the building, and forbade the singing of any of the Christmas songs that mentioned him at any church activity.

I say churches, plural, because my family moved often during my childhood. My dad’s job in the petroleum industry leading to my oft-repeated description of growing up as “ten elementary schools in four different states.”

I remember, for instance, the “Up On the House Top” controversy. One of the churches ran a nonprofit day care on weekdays. While it was a church day care, it was a business open to any family that could pay the fees, so a lot of the kids came from families that attended different churches (or no church at all). One year of the day care’s annual Christmas pageant, in addition to the usual repertoire of “Silent Night,” “O, Little Town of Bethleham,” “The Little Drummer Boy,” “Away in the Manger,” “Joy to the World,” and “Jingle Bells,” one group of kids sang a version of “Up on the House Top” that included some amusing choreography.

Some of the church ladies who were not regularly associated with the day care attended the pageant, and they were not pleased. It started running around the gossip circuit in the congregation that someone had allowed Santa Claus at the day care. The tone of voice some people used, you would have thought that someone was giving the kids alcohol and cigarettes. Or even worse, allowing them to listen to rock music!

To me, I didn’t see how it was that much different than “Jingle Bells,” which is a Christmas song that doesn’t mention Jesus’ birth at all. No one ever seemed to object to that in the children’s performance. And I recall a very amusing rendition of “I’m Gettin’ Nothin’ for Christmas” at an evening Christmas concert at church that no one objected to. Not every song performed at the less formal holiday events at the church had to be a sacred hymn, obviously.

Santa explains how to explain gay people to kids.
Why are flying reindeer less confusing than people who belief differently than you?
I realize that a lot of the people who believe that the War on Christmas is an actual thing are not necessarily hardcore Biblical literalist or fundamentalists. They’re a bit more casually Christian. They are the sorts of people who think that the phrase “cleanliness is next to godliness” actually comes from the Bible, right? They’re also the ones who can say, with a straight face, “Jesus promoted charity at the highest level, but he was not self-destructive. The Lord helps those who help themselves.”

And I get that Santa Claus gets his name from American ears hearing Dutch immigrants refer to Saint Nicholas (“Sinterklaas”) back in the 19th Century. And therefore to them Santa Claus is sort of an alias for the 4th Century Christian Bishop. But the red-suited man driving a sleigh pulled by magic reindeer and filling stockings with toys is not a Biblical character. He’s very much a secular figure.

And I’m looking forward to his visit at our house soon! Our stockings are up, our tree lights will be left on all night. I’m not sure whether we’ll be leaving him eggnog and cookies this year or if it might be sherry and pork pies. But, this liberal taoist gay man and his liberal wiccan bi husband are looking forward to tracking Santa on our computers and phones with the Norad app, watching some silly Christmas shows featuring such important Christmas characters as the Grinch, a red-nosed reindeer, and ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. And I can’t wait to see what Santa leaves in my stocking this year!

No matter what holiday you celebrate, I’d like to wish a merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Shambling toward Christmas Eve

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A tiger cub in a Santa Suit
A tiger cub in a Santa Suit (from Emergency Kittens)!
My vague plan for Sunday was to pack up & check out of the hotel, watch the Seahawks game, watch some of my Christmas movies, and get some housework done. Of course, I hadn’t discussed specifics with Michael. So we were eating brunch at a place we stopped at on the way home when all the plans started falling apart.

He needed to pick up some presents to give to his co-workers at their party. On the other hand, he hadn’t slept well at the hotel and really wanted a nap. So he suggested taking a nap while I watched the game, then we could go shopping. I had a sinus headache, and as we talked, realized that my throat felt a bit wrong. So I was worried I might be coming down with a cold… Continue reading Shambling toward Christmas Eve →

Holiday Party

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Picture of me in Christmas sweater.
I was trying to decide whether to wear the elf hat of the leopard-patterned Santa hat. You can’t see it in this picture, but my earring was bright blinking Christmas lights.
The Tai-Pan Literary & Arts Project, of which I am the Editor-in-Chief and was one of the original founding members 25 years ago, has been hosting a holiday party for many years.

We almost always have it on the third Saturday of December, since the third Saturday of every other month is the night we get together for our monthly Writers’ Night. For many years different members of the project took turns hosting the party. Then we went a number of years where the same household hosted it almost every year. Since the size of the party varies widely, it winds up being a major undertaking.

So this year we decided to try something different… Continue reading Holiday Party →

The true face of who?

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The true face of Santa Claus.
Face reconstructed from the saint’s skull, and five traditional icons (click to embiggen).
So, a Fox News person (Megyn Kelly) made the incredible claim, on a 10pm news show last week, that Santa Claus was white, and that African American children may feel uncomfortable with a white Santa, but the real Santa was white, because he was a Saint in Greece, just like Jesus was also a white man, and so people who write editorials about having Santa portrayed as a person of color need to just suck it up, because you can’t go changing historical facts because they make you uncomfortable.

If you go watch the video, you will see that I’ve actually made her argument slightly more coherently than she did.

Anyway, there are so, so many problems with that, and John Stewart on the Daily Show hit most of them in a far more funny and succinct way that I could. But there are some points John didn’t get to… Continue reading The true face of who? →

Brewing up some holiday cheer

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www.freefever.com/wallpaper/
Thinking about the Christmases past.
When my late husband, Ray, was still alive, every December we would acquire a number of bags of various Holiday Blends of coffee beans. It started out simple enough, I like Starbucks’ holiday blend, one of whose components are aged Sumatran beans, but Ray wasn’t a big fan, as he didn’t like dark roasted coffees. So he would pick up a bag of “Jingle Java” which was the Safeway store brand’s holiday coffee.

This escalated over time, as one or the other of us would find other companies offering some kind of holiday or christmas blend of beans while we were shopping. Some years we would wind up with a half dozen or more bags of different holiday blends…

Continue reading Brewing up some holiday cheer →

A song for the Christmas tree

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Cat with Christmas lights wallpaper desktopnexus.com
Time to put up the lights!
Once again this year we didn’t get much of our decorating done during the long Thanksgiving weekend. Some of the blame goes to me trying to finish my novel by the end of the month for my Alternate NaNoWriMo. Part of the blames goes to the fact that we drove down to Mom’s the night before Thanksgiving and drove home Thanksgiving night itself, so we both slept in more than a bit longer than usual on the day after Thanksgiving.

And part of the blame goes to me having a really awful sinus headache on Sunday.

Continue reading A song for the Christmas tree →

War on Thanksgiving?

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As ridiculous as I think all the stories about a war on Christmas always are, I have to admit that I like Buzzfeed’s use of the “War on Thanksgiving” label in this and related stories: Your Shopping Guide To Stores That Won’t Ruin Their Workers’ Thanksgivings.

They’ve compiled two lists:

  • Big national chains that are opening on Thanksgiving and making their employees come in on the holiday,
  • And the chains that are remaining closed the entire holiday.

I wound up in a chat online this week about the phenomenon. I have always felt a little guilty because my entire adult life I’ve had jobs where we get both Thanksgiving and the day after off as paid holidays. Meanwhile, my mom worked retail and always had to work either Thanksgiving Day or Christmas (a few years both). And each serious relationship I’ve been in, my partner has either had to work the holiday or at least both the day before and the day after.

And for the last many years, visiting my mom for the holidays has required us to rent a hotel room. Mom’s previous two living places where so small, the entire place would have fit inside our living room. When she was still living in Vancouver, that also meant that if my sister and her kids were there, they were all sleeping at Mom’s place, where there was no guest room.

Anyway, that means I also feel guilty about the people at the hotel who have to work that day, in part, because of me.

I still feel bad about the times I’ve had to run to a store on a major holiday. Though I must admit, the year that all of the sinks clogged up while I was in the middle of cooking (first Thanksgiving after Ray & I moved into the place, first time his mom had come to have a holiday dinner with us, and all of my sinks clogged!), that when I showed up in the checkout line with multiple bottles of drain opener and a plunger as my only items, the cashier laughed, and then said, “Thank you for making me feel like working this shift was worth it.”

Anyway, there are the lists, if you want to boycott or just send a letter to the folks in charge. I’m really hoping that they have so few people show up to shop that they don’t do it next year.

I am a crazy optimist, after all!

What’s for dinner?

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I used to always run a survey on my old LiveJournal for what people are having or did have for their Thanksgiving Dinner:

And:

Don’t forget:

Some heretics don’t have a relish tray (and even worse, don’t know what that is), but everyone has sauces or relish of some kind, right?

Sing w/e/ me joyous

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Kitten listening to ipod.
I can quit any time I want.
It is very nearly that time of year. It is nearly the time when I can start listening to Christmas music. I have been enforcing my rule for many years: I can’t start listening to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving.

Because of a comment by a friend on Twitter, I wound up in a discussion about my Christmas music, and because the person I was talking with is also a friend of my husband, he had to chime in with some comments about the size of my Christmas music collection. Which got more friends involved as we debated the timeless question: is there such a thing as too much Christmas music?

Continue reading Sing w/e/ me joyous →

Halloween silliness

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Me wearing all black clothes and a blonde wig.
It wasn’t a complicated costume.
For many years my Halloween costume has been driven by a party hosted by some friends of ours who have been hosting a Halloween party every year for more than 20 years.

It began way back when a sub-group of the Elfquest/sci fi fan groups we were associated with went to the Evergreen State College the weekend before Halloween to celebrate K’s birthday. Our friend, Mark, bought a piñata shaped like a Pokémon. I think more time was spent trying to figure out how to hang it from the window of the dorm/apartment and a nearby tree than anything else at the party. Though I also recall that the piñata was really difficult to break.

Anyway, K, D, and Auntie have been hosting Halloween parties ever since. The parties always have a theme, and one of the activities at the party is a piñata that matches the theme. There was a skull representing Horatio at the Shakespeare party, for instance, and a moon with little stars floating around it for one of the space themed parties.

There was never any requirement that one wear a costume that matched the theme of the party, but for those of us who are procrastinators and indecisive, having the theme could give you some ideas. The year the theme was “Antarctica” Michael and I showed up in shorts, Hawaiian shirts, leis, and sunglasses. We had a little act we did where we fumbled with a map of the Hawaiian islands. Our costume was “Lost Tourists.” I don’t remember what the theme was that had me dress as the Next Doctor and Michael dressed as his companion, a 1950s hard-boiled detective.

Anyway, having the deadline of our friends’ party pushed us to make a decision, and having the theme gave us something to either conform with, make a joke of, or just ignore.

Then, because of a series of events which culminated in a major appliance failure at their house and has kicked off a long-delayed kitchen remodel, they didn’t host a party this year. Which is understandable, but also a teensy bit of a downer.

So I thought I wasn’t going to be doing a costume this year.

Then one day at work I got an e-mail with the subject line “Top Secret!”

I don’t want to go into all the background, but during the last year among the changes and shakeups have been that the person who had been the VP of Sales for our group has been promoted to the head of our business unit. In some ways it was a very big change, as the guy who had been leading the unit had been in that position for well more than 10 years, and the company (like a lot of American corporations) didn’t have very many female executives. She’s not entirely conventional. She almost always wears black, for instance, and among her definitions of office attire (and not on casual days), is Levi jeans.

Anyway, it had occurred to someone that all of us could get long blonde wigs, and just show up wearing all black and with the wig. Then we could surprise her by coming into her office, all of us dressed as her. We even had “masks” that consisted of a printout of a photo of her that we could hold in front of our faces.

It wasn’t a very complicated costume, and it wasn’t something that anyone outside the company would recognize without an explanation, but it was fun, and silly, and what else is Halloween for?

Image of typewriter keys and the words The Alternate NaNoWriMo.
The Alternate NaNoWriMo, as proposed by Cafe Aphra (http://cafeaphrapilot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-alternative-nanowrimo.html)
In other news, my word count at the end of day two: 3928. Behind on the big goal, but ahead of my minimal goal! And, I may have talked my Mom into giving NaNo a try!