Christmas Meme

I like memes, 'cause my brain is very associative, and I can riff on them or on other people's blog posts much faster than I can come up with my own material. So in the spirit of easy blogging, this meme comes from Sex Ed in Higher Ed. Tag, you are it! Everybody nees a little Christmas meme!

1. Eggnog or hot chocolate? Both. To me hot chocolate is an all-winter thing, while egg nog is a fun treat only in stores briefly, so if I had to pick just one then egg nog is the truly "Christmas" drink. Cooking Light also has a fine fine recipe for Egg Nog Pie. Gotta make me some of that.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just put them under the tree? Both. It depends on the size of the gift. At my sister's house Santa uses specially purchased wrap that he is certain the kids have never seen.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? I like white, but the kids like colors, so now we have colors.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? No. I grew up in the middle of the woods, and mistletoe hung high in the trees. I associate mistletoe with strangers trespassing on our property to shoot mistletoe, and the fear of a stray gunshot. Festive, yes?

5. When do you put your decorations up? We put the outside lights up around Thanksgiving. But we've varied the day we put the tree up. My older daughter's birthday is December 13, so we're still struggling with how to give full attention to her birthday and not have it compete with Christmas. Last year we didn't put the tree up until after her birthday; this year we put up after her birthday party but before her actual birthday.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? It isn't really a holiday dish, but I always make spanikopita for family get-togethers around Thankgiving and Christmas. I like that.

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child? The Christmas morning when the three of us came downstairs and found three piles of 30 or so books each. My dad had gone on a spree at the used bookstore. For me that much reading material was like a big pile of chocolate.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? My parents did not believe in having their children believe in Santa. We always found this a little sad. My siblings and I all have told our kids that Santa comes.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? We did not as kids, but our parents divorced rather acrimoniously about 15 years ago, so we now have a gift exchange with my dad on Christmas Eve and with my mom on Christmas day.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? We invested in a number of ornaments that do not break! We also have colored lights and a few ornaments we've owned for years. In previous years we've put the tree on a table so kids and pets can't get to it, but this year it is on the floor so we could set up a wonderful train track my brother-in-law helped make.

11. Snow! Love it or dread it? Miss it. I lived in Minnesota for almost 10 years, and I learned to deal with it though I wasn't fond of the length of the winter. Here in North Carolina it never snows for Christmas (BigSister keeps asking where the snow is this year) but it sometimes does for my birthday (in January).

12. Can you ice skate? Hahahaha. No. I've tried. It is humiliating.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? See "favorite memory." And it wasn't really a gift, but I really appreciate my husband taking a job in North Carolina three years ago just before Christmas so I could be close to family and so I could get out of Idaho.

14. What's the most important thing about the holidays for you? Time with family, and watching my daughters enjoy it.

15. What is your favorite holiday dessert? My mother used to make these cream cheese pastry cookies called something like "kalashkas." The pastry was cream cheese and butter, and the filling was made with nuts and evaporated milk. I've been scouring the internet trying to figure out what exactly these were.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? We're working on new traditions. Last year my husband asked that I make crepes and apples for Christmas morning. It is something we associate with our dating years, when we went to Vegas and would have crepes and apples in the Paris resort. I like that, because it seems like a link with my pre-mommy life.

17. What tops your tree? A gold star ornament

18. Which do you prefer, giving or receiving? Giving. I like trying to find gifts that people will really like. I like feeling I got it right.

19. What is your favorite Christmas song? Santa Baby by Eartha Kitt

20. Candy canes? For looking, not for eating.

21. Favorite Christmas movie? The Grinch. And now it is my daughter's favorite too. In fact, I think she is going to be a little disappointed if we don't gather around the tree and sing "Welcome Christmas", so I went looking for the lyrics. My family doesn't know it yet, but we're going to be singing at the Christmas Eve get-together.

Enjoy the holidays.

I'm not a chef. But I know that.

I'm kind of touched that my site meter tells me that a few folks still stop by, even though I haven't really been posting. Thanks!

I don't have a good excuse for not posting, just a little overwhelmed by the holidays and houseguests (I am NOT doing another mother-in-law post, but yeah, she was here). Do you ever feel like you have this big checklist and the whole race to Christmas is kind of like a bad scavenger hunt where you have to find everything on the checklist before Christmas comes or else your head blows up?

That's where I am.

In other news, I got sucked in to a Usborne Book party a couple weeks ago. In general, my husband and I are firmly against home sale pyramid schemes of any sort. My husband is still bitter about a zester I bought at a Pampered Chef party some years back that didn't last more than two days. But my kids lovelovelove the Usborne "That's Not My Puppy" type books, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Now, I remember my first Pampered Chef party. I was living in St. Paul, in a wonderful kind of midwestern version of the urban single girl. I could walk to bars and stagger home, and I did. But a co-worker invited me to this party in the 'burbs and I went for the cultural experience. It was a cultural experience; I was the only single guest and I think the only childless one. But the thing that struck me the most was that despite the name "Pampered Chef," no real cooking was involved. They were not selling the best in cooking products, they were selling the best in convenience products for creating the illusion of cooking. Every recipe they presented started with "first you open this Pillsbury product." I grew up in an anti-convenience food household. I've learned to appreciate some convenience foods; they're not all bad. But when I use them I don't call it being a "chef."

I was reminded of that at the Usborne book party, when the presenter gaily told us that Usborne sold books all the way up to the adult level. "I've never read the classics," she chirped, "and they have all these great abridged versions of the classics [here she waved around a copy of Jane Eyre] so I'm learning all about them." I loved how she just slid past the word abridged really fast. From a pure marketing MBA level I loved the business model too. Take a book that it is so old that it is in the public domain, one anyone can download from Project Gutenberg, trim a few thousand words, call it literature, and charge $14.99 for it. Pure profit, baby.

I admit I'm a bit of a snob, but it saddens me that the "be a model or look just like one" business model can be so effective in so many other areas. A nice multi-size measuring spoon and I'm a chef, a couple of abridged classics and I'm an English major. Is this really what everyone wants, the quick way to everything? More than "you should have a party too, you get free stuff!" it is the "you can be an expert in something with minimal effort" that gets to me at these events.

Or maybe the holidays just have me grouchy.