Hi, I'm Tara and I'm a Christmasoholic.I fully admit it. I'm a junkie. A Christmas junkie. I'm totally digging 94.9fm's "All-Christmas-all-the-time" playlist. I get giggly when I walk into the mall-type area (although, you will not see me in a mall until absolutely necessary this time of year. I may be additicted, but I'm not stupid) and see the Christmas lights and decorations everywhere. I just ordered our Christmas cards. We got our tree this weekend. Some of the regular decorations and pictures have been carefully nestled away and in their place are winter, Christmas and general holiday themed items. My Christmas tablecloth and Santa cookie jar are on the table. I hung my Mistletoad (that's right, he's a frog!) up above the dining room door and Doug hung most of the lights on the house. It's not as obnoxious as it sounds. I promise. It's all tastefully simple. I just love Christmas. I will start shopping this weekend and have everything done to ship up North by the 15th. Christmas Eve is probably my most favorite day of the year. I love having my family over and eating tons of food (that I will bemoan later) and drinking drinks and watching 24 Hours of "A Christmas Story" and "It's a Wonderful Life". I'm always very sad December 26th.
We used to decorate cookies for ourselves and for people who would come to the house and save a few for Santa, of course. One of my most favorite Christmas memories was one year my mom was looking for a project to keep us busy, I guess. I'm not really sure the reasoning behind it. We made a miniature Christmas tree out of a phone book. (This was way back when the yellow pages were all in one ginormous book.) We folded the pages back from the top to the middle to make a triangle and then we spray-painted it green and broke out the glitter and the star stickers. It rocked! My mom was a friggin' genius! She gets embarrassed by that story. I don't know why. I love it. Perhaps it didn't turn out as glorious as I remember it, but that doesn't matter. It's the memory that counts. :-)
I also love Christmas because no matter how much (or really how little) money we had, my parents always made Christmas special. They remember it as "that Christmas everyone only got one or two gifts". We remember it as "remember those cool pop-up toys we got that year?" They are silly folks, but I love them. They sacrificed a lot to get us here. They are still married after all the crap they have been through and they are my heros. Absolutely.
Great movies come out of this time of year, too. "Scrooged", "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", "Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown", "Die Hard", "A Christmas Story", "A Christmas Carol", "The Ref", "National Lampoon's: Christmas Vacation", "The Nightmare Before Christmas"....I could go on. And yes, I did say "Die Hard". That is a friggin' classic!
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy Holidays in general to everyone. (chances are I won't be able to blog until after then so...) Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight!!
Peace!
