My Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Finally! My Christmas vacation begins!

Christmas Movies:
The Apartment
It's A Wonderful Life
A Christmas Story
The Royal Tenenbaums
The Crosby Films:Holiday Inn and White Christmas
Various Classics: The Women, The Philadelphia Story etc....
Rankin-Bass Toons, The Grinch!

Christmas Foods:
Tamales
EGGNOG and rum!
Collin Street Bakery-Fruitcake (I swear this stuff isn't nasty)
Green Bean Casserole
Ham
Turkey
Gingerbread and pralines, fudge, divinity and sugar cookies
Cheeseballs and dips


Christmas People:
You all know who you are, you lil devils ;>

Christmas Music: I have an extensive collection of Christmas CDs, jazzy, traditional, lounge, Latin, Rankin-Bass tunes, Sinatra etc...... In fact they make up half of my cd collection. I don't have Jingle Cats though. No Manheim SteamRoller either.


My childhood memories of Christmas still  bring Christmas cheer. My tree decorating habits, Christmas house decorating habits are stuck in the 70's.  Every year my mother would bake 7 different types of cookies, 3 different cakes, candies, various appetizers, dips and all sorts of yummy things. My brother and I would go over the Sears and JC Penney catalog forever. We'd mark all the Christmas specials on the calendar so suddenly the TV insert in the Sunday paper was very important.  I still remmeber commercials and scents, sounds and some Christmas cards even. Feliz Navidad!

Capra

People who don't know Capra's film often write them off to sappy, sentimentality only. There is more to his films than just that. That is the Capra cliche and it rings true but it is also superficial. There is more and has influenced the best directors for decades including ,my all time favorite, John Cassavetes. IAWL contains aspects to it's characters not wholly seen in movies of that time. It has a happy ending? It ends with the George character adopting a different perspective on life as he is surrounded by friends and family who love him and help out. The next day George is still at the Baily Bros. Building and Loan, still has a wife and four mouths to feed and has always had that network of friends and family whether he knows it or not so what exactly has changed? Our perspective as well.

In another of Capra's films, and another favorite, Hole in the Head, shows an America in the 50s that was not all easy street and tract housing and social conformity. Not everyone had a home, a wife, a mother or a job. It shows economic dependence on family at a time when it was believed the self made man was the absolute and only accepted way to live. The main character is a loser because he wants to be one, there is no oppressive situation offered as an excuse. It doesn't end with the main character striking it rich or even shaping up but an acceptance of this flawed individual by his family who will support him indefinitely.

John Cassavetes on Ray Carney's American Vision :

"It is such a pleasure to see energy flow in a positive direction. I share [Ray Carney's] love for Capra...in my estimation the greatest of all American directors, a man who was so beautiful, so forgiving, so democratic, so damned talented, so full of life and energy that his films patrol the imagination of America today. He represents a country that perhaps never was. We see his heavies and they are the mighty, the unbeatable, no longer caring until they are made to care by the innocent persistence of the heroes. The villains continue to be greedy until Capra's people make them realize that there's joy to living.... He is the American dream."

Ironically, Cassavetes' true hero among directors was a filmmaker one would hesitate to associate with his raw domestic dramas--Frank Capra, director of such classics as Mr. Smith goes to Washington, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and It's a Wonderful Life. "Those films showed the beauty of people having some kind of hope and dignity no matter on what strata of society they moved," said Cassavetes. "That quality has been lost in filmmaking--sentimentality, lots of ideals, but that's part of what America is all about. Frank Capra was and still is, in my opinion, the greatest filmmaker that ever lived. Capra created a feeling of belief in a free country and in goodness in bad people, that everyone reaches a limit where they would stop and be sane again, because what they really wanted was to have compassion for other people and live in a spirit of friendliness and brotherhood. Idealism is not sentimental. It validates a hope for the future. Capra gave me hope and in turn I wish to extend a sense of hope to my audiences."

Stuck

Four days till  Christmas Eve. UGH! Next year I'm hoarding my vacation time so I can take the week before Christmas off. Actually I did hoard it but due to a car accident I was put behind and missed work etc....I have music I want to listen too, Christmas movies and Rankin-Bass toons to watch, pralines, a spice cake and other stuff I'd like to make, a tree from Vermont to sip tea and look at... I'm so Christmasssssy, is torture to be at work this time of year, unless you are an elf. Want to go see the lights on 37th street tonight.

Listening to a $2 CD called Christmas Favorites. I also have Elvis Christmas (thanks, Carolina and Vince)  a special mix of Christmas songs (thanks, Wm). I have a fridge housing a cheeseball and brie, golly gee I wish I were home.

I have ideas to sew and crochet and knit but I am stuck here in a cube at work. Going to watch It's A Wonderful Life. Will watch it on my work computer, drink some chai, have a cookie and all of a sudden work will turn into a cozy, Christmas nook.

Southtown, USA

I wish Snow Miser would blow some artic air this way for Christmas because Heatmiser definitely has a stong hold on us. The annoying, little, weathermen all happily announced mid to high 70s for the Christmas weekend. GRRRRRRRR Nothing starts me off worse than hearing nice and warm and sunny in December. I like it BLEAK, dark, ICE COLD! and snow would be nice for Christmas(I know but I can wish can't I?Could happen). What happened to El Nino? I don't hear about that anymore, is it gone?

Sux that the USA does not partake in the slow, long, relaxing version of Christmas. In other countries like Mexico Christmas begins December 25th and continues for 12 days with parties, visiting friends, giving out gifts and cookies and ending with King cake on the Feast of the Three Kings January 6th. In Germany it's from December 6th to January 6th. I take my decor down on the 7th. Had friends over for eggnog and king cake last year.

In America seems like Christmas begins the week before Thanksgiving and ends the evening of the 25th. Seems to start in September and October in some stores. People rush to picked over shelves and buy more Christmas decor on the 26th then rush home to pack it all away for next November. December 26th brings trees in a dumpster (so sad to see), lights halfway pulled from roof tops and living rooms filled with exercise equipment. I try to stay close to home during that time because these sights ruin my twelve days.

xmashappyholidaysmerrychristmasseason'sgreetings

...it all smells like whiskey, rum and oranges!

Very Christmassy today despite the accident that has been working to ruin my holiday season. I still have so much to worry about but putting it aside for this tiny moment.

Sinatra's voice and those carols.....the smell of whiskey, rum and cooking sherry, clementines and of course fir trees. 12/14 is a special day, 12/23 is too.

We would start Christmas off with St Nick's Day on 12/6 when I was a kid then the JC Penney catalogue would be fought over, dog eared, circled in crayon and marker and finally torn up before the 24th. School had that secret Santa thing and art moments would spring up throughout the day with glitter, glue and styrofoam. I'd take that home and make more stuff out of anything, sticks, bits of broken ornaments, wrappping paper etc...

My mom would sew during December making us cute pjs , dresses (when my sister was born) and stockings......

There wasn't a mall in my life until 1979 and I have a great memory so I remember pre mall Christmas days. There was a toy store with nice display windows. JC Penneys downtown had Santa in the center of the store. There was the Christmas photo done of my brother and I every year there in November and mailed out in December to friends and relatives.

My mom would be decorating the house a little more Christmassy every year as things collected. My favorite ornaments were those felty Santa's and elves that go for so much on Ebay. Guess they stand out in everyone's memory.

There was the school party and gift exchange at 2pm before we got off for the holidays. Then there was a mess in a corner of our living room and or dining room where I'd be wrapping gifts. I would go all out with the ribbon, fancy folding tricks and bows and Christmas Seals. I see those go for a bit on Ebay now too. The mess would go on until 12/23 or so. We'd have to help clean the house while my mom made her cookies, cakes, stuffed mushrooms, cheese balls, swedish meat balls, Bisquick sausage balls and gingerbread.

Back to pre-mall days: It was cold, maybe because I was smaller or the global warming hadn't yet taken effect but it was COLD! We'd be going in and out of stores, big old 50's looking dept stores because 70s kids were the tail end of all that. You know, like Joskes in San Antonio where bargain basement prices meant you wander down to a basement and in nice square table like bins were signs with 10 for a $1 and tons of women were down there battling over undies, socks, sweaters. In my town there was Bealls, it was HUGE. Gibson's had the tinsel, Perry's had the felt we'd cut up and turn into weird little ornaments that I can't make out now but my mom still remembers what they were said to be.

They would gift wrap for you until around 1980 or so.....that's when I started after watching all those years.

A few gifts Santa brought: Star Wars, Barbie, Baby Alive, Baby Soft Sounds, Raggedy Anne, Tonka, Tinker Toys, Life, Risk, Casio keyboard, Fisher Price, Mattel, That wonderful plastic smell and tape (yes tape had a scent), sewing machine that worked with a cartridge, dishes, Ernie muppet, Pooh, blocks, Lincoln Logs (smelled good). I believed in Santa a little too long because my parents were good at it with different wrapping paper, not keeping presents in the house, not shopping around us.

One year I asked for Santa's autograph, didn't recognize it as anyone's I knew. To this day no one has taken credit for that.

December 12, 1915

A Grey Garden's Christmas and other minutiae

I have seen Grey Garden's over and over and over. Imagine my excitement when I discovered my friend had not seen it once! Yay! So I've invited her over for a Grey Garden's Christmas evening. We will watch the Maysles follow the Edies around and snack on crackers with spreads. Thought it would be a nice homage to how Big and Little Edie ate per the doc. No boiled corn but we'll have Christmas cocktail foods made from authentic 70's recipes and I'll take my cocktail in a mason jar.

I've always wanted to have a Grey Garden's party. I'd like it in a half empty, old house (with cats roaming?), boiled corn, pate on crackers, cake, ice cream, cocktails in mason jars and the movie running on a 16 mm projected on a wall. Of course you must dress like an Edie or Maysles brother. Maybe when I turn 50 this will be my over the hill themed party, sans the cats and raccoons. We have four already so that's enough.

This year the plan is homemade peppermint cocoa, homemade marshmallows, gingerbread men, gingerbread cake and still sorting out what cookies to bake.... stuffed mushrooms, various, yummy, balled up cocktail foods, teehee (the kitsch factor in that is tremendous and tres nostalgic for me).

Basically the season really kicks off today after work.

Tiki Monkey Christmas!