True Confessions: Holiday Edition
Today we continue our Holiday Season Extravaganza. Between now and December 25, we will share what it means to celebrate the holidays — Life in Pencil style.
Posted by Anne
I solemnly swear that the statements I am about to divulge are the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…so help me Santa Claus.
Please see item #12
1. I’ve never seen Miracle on 34th Street. I’m really not sure why. For whatever reason, it didn’t make it into our annual holiday film rotation, and I’ve just never sat down to add it to the list. I hear it’s a good one. Someone tell me…what’s the miracle? Last year, for the first time ever, I watched White Christmas, and was not disappointed, so perhaps I should be open.
2. In light of yesterday’s great post, I’m happy to report that I like the idea of giving gifts that benefit someone else. And I’d be happy to receive such gifts as well. However, since this is a “true confessions” list, I feel it my duty to report that I also like receiving gifts of the non-goat variety. I like unwrapping boxes. Untying bows. Wondering what’s inside. And most of all…I love thinking that someone took the time to think about me, and about what’s important to me. Someone stood in an overly crowded store, and said, “This might make Anne smile.” Or they stood over their stove or sewing machine and made me something. And it does, indeed, bring me warmth. I would do the same for them. A thoughtful gift is, to me, an expression of love. More isn’t always better, and price-tags should be irrelevant. But thought is forever. So there you go. I like getting stuff.
Sing it! "I don't want a lot this Christmas...."
3. I LOVE that Mariah Carey song. You know the one. All I Want for Christmas is You. I love it when I hear it in “Love Actually”, which I watch even in the height of summer. And I love it during the holiday season, when I hear it for the 100th time while I’m shopping for toothpaste at Walgreens. Love it. Can’t get enough of it. It reminds me of parties, long drives to see my family during winter breaks in college, and falling in love.
4. I’m not entirely sure what fruitcake is. I pretend to complain about it every year, and participate in the annual camaraderie that revolves around fruitcake hatred. But I have no idea what it is. I would think it’s probably cake with fruit in it, but what’s so offensive about that?
5. I’ve never understood why people string popcorn from Christmas trees. It seems like a waste of popcorn, if you ask me.
6. I do not believe in unwrapping presents carefully. I believe in ripping.
7. Jimmy Stewart kinda bugs me in It’s a Wonderful Life. I greatly prefer him in The Philadelphia Story.
8. I always plan my Christmas morning pajamas in advance. But no matter what I do, I look terrible in those pictures. And Christmas has never been allowed to progress in our home without that picture–my flat hair, sealed in our collective memories.
I do NOT know how Scrooge can just sit there. That man is creepy.
9. To this day, I become extremely frightened while watching A Christmas Carol. Jacob Marley freaks me out. I can’t watch it at night.
10. In 4th and 5th grades, we had to go around in school and say what our favorite present was for the year. There was this girl named Kimberly who always got the same thing I did….but the fancier, more expensive version. She always made a big deal of it. I really didn’t like that girl.
11. My favorite Christmas decoration is my Nativity scene. When I look at it, I think I feel something akin to peace.
12. I wish there were real trees made of Williams-Sonoma Peppermint Bark. I seriously love that stuff.
13. The holidays make me feel both older and younger than my actual age.
Okay…your turn. Any holiday confessions? Explanations of fruitcake? Advice on how to take a cute picture on Christmas morning?
December 9th, 2009 at 9:35 am
I’m with you on the Mariah Carey song and the Peppermint Bark. My other confessions include:
1. All the other classics are well and good, but “Christmas Vacation” is probably my favorite. I laugh just thinking about the Jelly of the Month tirade. (I’m laughing right now!)
2. Does the thoughtfulness of the gift count if its purchase was aided by the convenience of, say, the internet? Cause I’ve done a LOT of that this year…
3. I love Christmas dinner MUCH more than Thanksgiving dinner. Standing rib roast, Yorkshire pudding, brussels sprouts braised in beef drippings. It just doesn’t get any better.
4. I love Christmas afternoon almost as much as Christmas morning. The laziness, the quiet, the naps.
December 9th, 2009 at 9:55 am
If online shopping doesn’t “count”, I’m in big trouble.
December 9th, 2009 at 9:58 am
I love Christmas Eve more than Christmas. I feel it’s more magical.
I love giving gifts more than receiving them. (I go into debt every year because of it.)
In 1997 I watched the Christmas story 100 TIMES!
I started in October and watched it every day till Christmas. I sometimes had to watch it more than once a day in December. (I still watch it at least 20 times a season.)
I’m so excited that my daughter is now old enough to learn about and appreciate Santa Claus this year. And I get to teach her!
December 9th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Love your list of confessions, Anne!!!
1. A Christmas Carol totally scares me, and especially this new animated one. Those commercials are CREEPY!!
2. I also have to confess I really don’t like A Christmas Story–it also kinda creeps me out.
3. O, Holy Night makes me cry every time I hear it.
4. I hate blue Christmas lights. DEPRESSING.
5. Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the holidays. Always something magical about it.
December 9th, 2009 at 11:18 am
1. I tell everyone my Favorite Christmas movie is Little Women but it really is Christmas Vacation.
2.I think Christmas gifts are for the kids, and could really care less if I get any.
3.Love the fact that I married a man who loves Christmas as much as I do although when trying to make desicions it can get hard, like when he wants a 9 ft pinon tree.
4. I am more excited to see my Daughter at Christmas this year than I was at her first. There is something magic about a child starting to understand that there is magic in the season.
December 9th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Honestly, Anne…
from Time-Life’s “Foods of the World: The Cooking of the British Isles”—
“…to every table in the land comes one holiday dish: the Christmas pudding, mystic, dark,and wreathed in flames. Today the Christmas pudding is a fruity, brandy-soused offering.” The book then goes on to explain how it has evolved from Shakespeare’s day to our own. I’ll spare you.
Charles Dickens describes the Cratchits’ Christmas pudding: “Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like washing day. That was the cloth.” (I disagree with him there…) “A smell like an eating-house and a pastry-cook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’ next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute, Mrs. Cratchit entered–flushed but smiling proudly–with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of a half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.”
So, what’s not to like? Smells like a laundry and hard as a cannonball, BUT: soaked in brandy. A good Christmas pudding (fruitcake) has lots and lots of butter, chopped candied fruits, raisins, currants, flour, dark brown sugar, nuts, eggs and sherry, rum and/or brandy.
It is not hard and doesn’t smell like laundry. It’s soft and rich and yummy, and served with “hard sauce,” which is simply butter, sugar, and brandy or rum.
Actually, when I was 14, I made one for Christmas dinner. I carried it into the dining room, blazing, with holly stuck in the top.
Then I went back to bed because I had the flu, but I’d been anticipating my big moment for weeks…which is what it takes to “season” a good fruitcake or plum pudding.
Happy Christmas!
December 9th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Well there you have it…I had no idea the modern-day fruitcake was related to the Christmas pudding. Obviously, I’m all about the pudding…since we eat it almost every year. Mostly I just like it for the hard sauce:)
December 10th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Anne-
I just wanted to say that I fell out of my chair laughing at number 10!!! I didn’t like that girl either… For more reasons than mentioned!! Love Life in Pencil, brightens my day
LA