christmas confessions

you know how we all have our weird quirks? i think everyone has a whole special set of minorly embarrassing holiday ones. we all have such set christmas traditions and ways that we celebrate (or, in some cases don't celebrate) this time of year. so, in the spirit of giving, here are some of mine. please promise you won't judge me.

1. i don't like charlie brown's christmas. i know that probably makes me un-american, but their christmas tree sucks, lucy is bossy and annoying, linus just walks around stinking everywhere and no one listens to charlie's whining. due to significant lack of coffee last week, i let this little one slip in front of the whole staff at work. not something i probably should have shared so early in the game. don't worry, i do enjoy many other heartwarming holiday films. i'm not a total scrooge.

2. until two years ago, i thought the song "i saw mommy kissing santa claus" was the most horrible christmas song ever. i just couldn't understand why we have a beloved carol about mom whoring around on dad. i made a comment to this end, and was told that santa claus is actually the dad in that song. somehow this had escaped me until age 24. all that aside, i still hate the song, but at least mom is playing by the rules.

3. i think fruitcake is delicious. rum? check. candied fruit? check. intensely concentrated carbs? check check check.

4. i listen to christmas music starting in august. you can be annoyed if you want to, but that's not really going change anything. additionally, my 98 degrees this christmas, n'sync home for christmas and hanson snowed in albums are some of my absolute favorites. shiny teen popstars really understand how to celebrate the holidays.

5. i have never had a real tree. my mom was allergic growing up, but honestly i just don't see how they make sense economically. my artificial one is free every year. and actually, since i took it out of my neighbor's trash, it's always been free. now that makes me feel festive.

6. i will swear on pretty much anything you want that i heard reindeer hooves on my roof in the middle of the night one christmas eve when i was young. not a dream. when i found out santa wasn't really showing up at my house in a sleigh every year, i could accept it minus this one little occurrence. i'd still like to know what i heard that night.

7. my brother and i still, at 24 and 26, sit on the living room floor in our pajamas and open our stockings together. aaron can hate me for posting this photo, but he should also thank me that i didn't post the photo i found from christmas a few years earlier where he's wearing his new football helmet and no pants.

8. in the fifth grade, my class put on this freaking awesome christmas pageant at school. we re-wrote and enacted the night before christmas poem about our school's principal and had musical performances by fifth graders impersonating famous people. i was a fifties dancer in brenda lee's rocking around the christmas tree. i wore a hot pink poodle skirt and danced around the christmas tree (which was actually a girl named lila who got the raw end of the deal) with a little hispanic girl named guadeloupe. (see crappy photo above.) we also all painted and wore wreath sweatshirts (hand prints made the wreath, fingerprints were the berries) to wear for the show. additional headliners included performances from bruce springsteen, alvin and the chipmunks and run dmc. i'm not sure what i learned in fifth grade other than all of the lyrics to christmas in hollis, which i still remember and would be happy to sing (rap?) for you on command.

9. i used to write secret letters for santa even after i knew he wasn't real. i would hide them in my room on christmas eve and excitedly look to see if he found them on christmas morning. sadly he never did, but that didn't keep me from trying. i may have held on to the santa myth a little longer than i'm proud of. i blame hallmark and all of their heartwarming, magical christmas specials.

10. i don't think new york city at christmas is really all that special. it's mostly just overcrowded and over-commercialized. i'd like to find it magical, but i'm just not sold.


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