Thirty Days of Christmas; Day Eight: The Birthdays

This post is all about the birthdays in December, be them close to Christmas or not. I’ve known two people who had December birthdays, both of them being on Christmas Eve. The first was my grandmother and the second is a friend’s daughter.

Now, this is still a sensitive subject for me. My grandmother passed away in September. She was my last grandparent on either side of the family. My maternal grandfather passed away when I was little and we were living overseas. My paternal grandparents were gone within a year of each other and the only one I got to go to was my grandfather’s funeral.

I’m not usually an emotional person, but seeing my grandmother lying in the coffin, I could tell it wasn’t her. There was no life there. It looked, and smelled, like plastic and I knew that it wasn’t her. I may not believe in God, but I do believe in a heaven and I knew that was where my grandmother was. She wasn’t hurting or sad anymore.

Now, if my friend is reading this, then she knows what I’m talking about. Her daughter also has a Christmas birthday and I have to ask: Does she get birthday and Christmas presents at the same time? Is it just one big present? I’ve never quite understood the dynamic there. I’ve heard some people say they hate having a late birthday like that as they only got one round of presents.

Thirty Days of Christmas; Day Seven: The Origins

So today is probably going to be a short post on the origins of the actual Christmas holiday. (Read: I’m going to put up some links so you can read them at your leisure. That’s how lazy I am on this post.)

The first link I have for you is this: The History of Christmas

And, of course, it wouldn’t be legitimate without some kind of Wikipedia link: Christmas

So, to sum up, you can either look at the religious connotations of the holiday or you can look at the historical examples, but whatever you choose to believe is your choice.

Merry Christmas!

Thirty Days of Christmas; Day Six: The Food

This post is all about the food of the season, from the chocolates of the advent calendar to the summer sausage and cheese gifts that are so often desired. However, the one thing it will not cover is Christmas cookies. Those will have their own post later this month.

Now, let’s get those taste buds drooling. For as long as I can remember, we have had a ham for Christmas dinner. It is usually adorned with pineapple slices and has mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, rolls, vegetable salad, and pie alongside it. The best part of all that is the ham juice. It’s too thin to be considered a gravy, but it tastes of both ham and pineapple and is absolutely amazing.

I would like to diverge just a bit to talk about the vegetable salad we usually had at home. It has cauliflower, green olives, peas, carrots, onions and all of it is drenched in a vinegar sauce that essentially pickles the whole mass. It’s only good for about a week, but that week is probably the best week ever. I tried to make it for this group of friends once but none of them liked it. I learned later that it was the vinegar that they didn’t like. Of course, they didn’t tell me that. They just didn’t eat it, without the willingness to try it.

Let’s see… of course there’s all kinds of pie. My favorite was always pumpkin. I never liked cherry or apple and I’d never had pecan until I got married. After that, I learned that Hubby loves not only cherry but apple and pecan as well. I still don’t like cherry pie, but I will eat apple pie with cheddar cheese melted on top of it.

One year, we made Thanksgiving dinner for our friends. We were going to have a cherry pie, but we didn’t have enough filling. We did, however, have a can of apple pie filling so Hubby mixed them together. The turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and green beans were still there the next day, but the cherry-apple pie was gone in one sitting. I still don’t understand how or why they liked it. It was thrown together at the last minute while the rest of the meal was planned out.

Thirty Days of Christmas; Day Five: The Stocking

I apologize for not having a post yesterday. My only excuse is that it was my last day of work for the week and I was taking some time to wind down and play some video games. 

Now, let’s get down to business. This post will talk about the stockings we hang for Christmas. As the old rhyme states: “The stockings were hung/by the chimney with care/in hopes that Saint Nicholas/soon would be there”. Now, we don’t have a fireplace or even a wall to hang them on, but we do have stockings hanging this year. They are hanging off the edge of our plastic shelves near the tree, but it’s close enough. Right?

The tradition of hanging stockings goes back a long way, at least for what I know. It hails from an old Dutch (or German, I’m not sure which) custom of putting shoes filled with straw out for the reindeer to munch on and the old version of Santa would fill them with goodies as a reward for children’s good deeds. (If this is not completely accurate, I apologize. I’m too lazy to look it up right now and I’m going off what I remember from stories that I read when I was little).

Two of the stockings were made by mother with needlepoint. The one I have was the same one I had at home when I was little. The one my mother made for Hubby was a gift and now they look very nice hanging side-by-side. We have two other stockings, one of which was another I had when I was young and the other is one I gave to Hubby as my own present one year.

Do you have any stocking traditions you like? What were your stockings filled with come Christmas morning?

Thirty Days of Christmas; Day Four: The Tree Topper and Skirt

This post is all about the top and bottom of the tree. The top of our tree is not an actual tree topper. It’s a snowman decoration we picked up at the dollar store. The main reason being that it was all we could afford at the time. However, now it doesn’t fit with the overall theme of our tree and we’re looking at replacing it. Having a clear plastic decoration on the top of the tree looks out of place compared to all the bright lights and colors. (Also, Hubby said it looks like our tree has a condom on it.)

Now, for the bottom of our tree, we usually have a plain sheet to catch the inevitable stray needles that fall off. We borrowed my parent’s extra tree skirt one year but we gave it back shortly thereafter. This year, however, I’m currently working on making a knitted tree skirt. It’s done in triangular sections and is sewn together when finished. I think there’s only one small problem: I don’t have a lot of free time between now and Christmas nor do I knit very quickly. I am almost done with the second section and, if I want to cover the entire base of the tree, I still have at least a half dozen more to go.

I guess all I can really do is buckle down and keep at it. Maybe I’ll have enough done by Christmas to have half a skirt. That would be something, right?

Thirty Days of Christmas; Day Three: The Ornaments.

Here we are again, with another installment of my Thirty Days of Christmas blog. This is another post that has ties to the original post about the tree as today’s topic covers the ornaments.

As I mentioned before, our tree has a variety of different ornaments on it. Some of them are for both of us, some of them are for each of us individually, and some are from our childhood and cannot be replaced. 

An example of the first would be our Gone with the Wind  ornament. It features Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara in the scene where Scarlett is in mourning and receives a lovely green bonnet from Rhett. She is holding it in her hand and looking up at him while he cups her chin and looks down. It’s a cute little ornament that Hubby and I believe fits us quite well. 

Another example of the ornaments that are for both of us would be those that have ‘Our First Christmas’ on them. One of them was given to us by my parents as a Christmas present the year we were first married. (On a side note, this year was our fourth year being married. Next year will be a milestone, five years. Provided the world lasts that long, of course, but that’s another topic.)

An example of the second type of ornament, the ones that are for each of us individually, are those like Hubby’s Three Stooges ornament. He loves them and puts them on the tree every year. Another of his would be his Taz ornaments (from Looney Tunes Taz, in case anyone’s confused) or his space shuttle ornament.

For the second type of ornament, I have the Disney character set my mom got me a few years ago as well as my Barbie ornaments. Now, the Barbie ornaments are special because this is the last year that Hallmark is making them. If I want anymore, I will have to order them directly and they will only go from this year back. The Disney set is one my mom found and bought for me and, as far as I know, they are not replaceable.

 

The third type of ornament, the ones that are from are childhoods, are things like the bear-in-swing ornament or the angel that lights up when plugged into the string of lights. For Hubby, he has a merry-go-round tiger and carnival tiger, in a cage, that he likes to put on the tree. I don’t mind either, as they are very old and fragile and there may not be any more like them… ever.

Now, there is another topic about ornaments that I would like to discuss. Sherrilyn Kenyon, a wonderful author and one of my Facebook friends (http://www.facebook.com/AuthorSherrilynKenyon) has something she calls a ‘Lucas/Rodenberry Bush’. It has Star Trek, Star Wars, and other assorted decorations on it, as well as a Yoda treetopper. While I may be a nerd, I cannot claim to be that big of one. However, it brings up an interesting topic: theme trees. Maybe one year, we’ll do a theme tree where we’ll have nothing but glass ornaments. One year will be nothing but shiny plastic. It’s something my parents and I used to do every year until I left home. Hubby and I will just have to buy more ornaments if we want to do something like that.

Thirty Days of Christmas; Day Two: The Lights

So, I know I covered this in yesterday’s post just a bit, but I decided it needed it’s own day and a little more in-depth exploration.

Today’s topic is all about the lights. Whether it’s inside or out, I think it is a sign of the season when the lights begin to twinkle. Our tree has blue lights and, aside from the dark spot on top of the tree, I think it looks very pretty.

We don’t have a way to have lights outside, but that’s okay. After seeing some of  the rather insane displays of lights on the show on TV last night, I’m okay with the few bits of Christmas we have.

Can you imagine having 200,000 lights? And going for a total of 1,000,000? It just seems ridiculous.

Thirty Days of Christmas; Day One: The Tree

I finally figured out what I wanted to write about for my thirty days of blogging. In Thanksgiving there was a thing going around on my Facebook page about the ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness’. Every day, people would post something they were thankful for. I didn’t participate in it, because I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t have thirty days of things to be thankful for and I didn’t want to seem selfish for all the things I could think of.

However, Christmas is a time of not only selfishness, but selflessness, so I thought I’d put up my own ‘Thirty Days’ list. Here’s the first of the thirty.

Day One: On the first day of Christmas, I sat and looked at our little tree. The lights on it are blue. They’re not the traditional multicolored or white lights, but I think they’re pretty nonetheless. Considering what’s on our tree it makes sense for the lights to be a different color as well.

We have ornaments ranging from Disney characters to ones we had when we were children. The Disney ornaments were a gift from my parents, as it took them a while to order and collect them all. Disney has never made another set and I’m not sure if they ever will. The older ornaments are a sentimental thing, merely remembering our childhood.

There are also Barbie ornaments, Taz ornaments, the Three Stooges, and the Space Shuttle. The Barbies are for me, but I’m saddened as this is the last year Hallmark is making them so I’ll have to find something new. The Taz, Three Stooges, and Space Shuttle are all Hubby’s but I don’t mind. I have the majority of the ornaments on the tree as it is, so if he has his special ones, what does it matter?

We also have a few ornaments that have the date on them, as well as one Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’hara ornament. These are the characters from Gone with the Wind and we have them for a couple of reasons. One, and I think this might be the biggest, is that they reflect us so closely that it’s kind of scary. Scarlett is stuck up and pretentious, always wanting to get her way and always, always, striving for perfection. I can be like that sometimes, especially if it’s with something I enjoy a lot. Rhett is carefree but serious, a true gentleman at heart even if the exterior is a bit gruff.

There will always be fun ornaments on our tree. We’re both kids at heart and probably always will be. For example, we have a Catwoman ornament, new this year, as well as a Minion ornament (from the movie Despicable Me). Someday, we might have a second tree that we can put our black and white Christmas balls on with blue lights, but we’ll have to wait to get our black tree for that.

NaBloPoMo… Who knew?

I know that November is a month of many things. Not only do we have Thanksgiving, but also there is NaNoWriMo, which is a month-long novel writing experience, as well something dealing with moustaches and beards (the name escapes… No-Shave November I think?). But I recently learned about NaBloPoMo, which is a month of blog posts. Well, I may be a little too late to participate this year, but I think I’ll make it up in December. DeBloPoMo? December Blog Posting Month! Every day in December, I will write a blog post. I can’t promise they’ll be long, but even if its just a quick hello, there will be one. Maybe it’ll be what I need to get on track with blogging XD

Insanity

This is the wierdest thing I’ve seen in a long while.