Merry Christmas, movie house! Merry Christmas, Emporium!

Very little progress to show today. I tore out what I'd done of the first Jamesey sleeve when I realized it was too short. So I'm only up to the sideways stitch and knitting doggedly, determined to finish this thing before I get home. It can block locked in an upstairs bedroom at my parents' house, but it will be finished! Last night I watched It's a Wonderful Life on TV, and I found it so incredibly bittersweet. It provides a great argument for not having kids ("You call this a happy family? Why do we have to have all these kids?") and a documents a man's hopes and dreams slowly being compressed into a small town life. The ending does redeem most of the depressing bits, but there's a good 30 minutes in the middle of the movie when I felt really bleak about everything. In an attempt to redeem myself from inappropriately bleak thoughts, here's the Christmas meme I've seen in a couple of different places, but originally at Kitten's blog. Egg nog or hot chocolate? I've only recently started drinking egg nog, so I'll have to go with hot chocolate here. The old favorite. Does Father Christmas wrap presents or just set them under the tree? He wraps them, and if he's wrapping presents from my sister he wraps them with enough tape to hold down a gorilla. Coloured lights on tree/house or white? White. My neighbors don't agree with me on this, sadly. Do you hang mistletoe? Nope. When do you put up your decorations? Whenever it's crunch time and I need to do something festive to distract myself from the end-of-the-semester stress. This year, I think they went up around the 10th. What's your favourite Christmas dish? Green bean and mushroom soup casserole. I think this may be an exclusively American thing, but it's the food of the gods, people. Of the gods. (It's also, me being vegetarian, one of the few things I can eat at family gatherings.) Favourite Christmas memory as a child? I remember wearing a new red dress and dancing along with some company's Nutcracker performance while it was on TV at my grandmother's house. There's a photo somewhere of me spinning, arms out, dress billowing, head thrown back, and eyes closed. Very cute and not something anyone over 5 can ever do without looking like an ass. When and how did you learn the truth about Father Christmas? No clue, and judging by most people's responses to this question, it clearly isn't as traumatic an experience as I'd always heard it is. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Nope. But one year my parents got us all pajamas and we opened those on Christmas Eve. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? My parents' tree is covered in decorations from the past three decades and some old ones from my grandmother. The tree TB and I had last year (and I still have this year) is tiny and was loaded full of as many ornaments as we could shove on there. This year I have the same small tree up, decorated with the white lights it came with and some shiny bells and a glass candle. I'm working with the ornaments his mother sent us last year, and there's a shortage of the glassy, shiny objects I like. Snow! Love it or dread it? I love it. Last year (when I lived in Ohio) we had snow frequently during the winter, and it never got old. Even when I have to drive and/or walk in it, I really, really love snow. Can you ice skate? I've tried. TB and I went ice skating years ago and I assumed I'd be good at it. Over a decade of ballet dancing? Check. Sense of balance? Check. Reasonably physically fit? Check. Good skater? NO. I had a few spectacular wipe-outs and on the last one TB nearly skated over my hand. I got the hell off the ice and thinking about an ice skate slicing through my bony hand still makes me feel ill. Do you remember your favourite gift? My birthday is the 27th, so I can't really remember which gifts were Christmas and which were birthday. I think my favorite Christmas present is the mp3 player TB got me two years ago. It's not that it was expensive -- Ok, that is part of it. I was incredibly impressed that he'd spend more than $100 on me when I was digging in my couch cushions to find money for his gift. It was my first year of grad school and I was making about, oh, 50 bucks a month -- BUT it's that it was something I really wanted but obviously wasn't about to ask him for. I used that thing every day until it broke this summer. Guess what he's getting me for Christmas this year? What's the most important thing about Christmas for you? Being another year older (which hasn't seemed significant until this year), seeing my family, and making them happy with the giving of gifts. What's your favourite Christmas dessert? Americans don't have Christmas desserts in the same way Europeans do. I like stollen though. And I'm always ready for pies. What's your favourite Christmas tradition? Growing up, my family would get together with a family we were friends with and watch the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol. It's a fantastic movie, even without the sentimental attachment I have to it, and is chock full of great actors (except for the kid who plays Tiny Tim. Ick.). The kids, all six of us, used to leave the room when Marley's ghost comes in through the locked door and reemerge once he was safely in the room talking to Scrooge. Last year we all got together again and watched it, and spent most of the movie reciting our favorite lines. You can do a lot worse than memorizing Dickens for your Christmas tradition. What tops your tree? Nothing. It would keel over a la Charlie Brown's tree. Which do you prefer: giving or receiving? Giving. What's your favourite Christmas song? Can I list a few? Bing's version of "I'll Be Home for Christmas," any version of "The Holly and the Ivy," and "O Holy Night." I've got a version of this on cd somewhere that has a trumpet solo at the "faaaaaaaaaaaall on your kneeeeeeeeeeeeeees" part and it gives me goosebumps every time. Candy canes? No thanks. They make my mouth feel like it's coated in sugary fuzz. Not very festive. 8 days until Christmas, kids!