Fjord Moose: It's Chrriiiissstmaaaaas!

We'll be having Thanksgiving dinner in a week or so, since we like our own better than the family potluck.

We'll have turkey again on Christmas Day. On Christmas Eve, we'll visit family, then go to church for the 10pm service, because Mr. Thing and I sing in the choir. We're having a caroling party at our house on the 20th. We have our musical friends over (the ones who can read music) and sing Christmas hymns and maybe attempt one of the easier choruses from Messiah.

The town tree lighting festivities are this Friday. They put lights on one of the big evergreens on the town green; various music groups from the schools perform, there's an attempt to sing some Christmas songs, but the crowd is so big the people at the back are usually a line behind by the end. Then Santa will come and make a good show of saying Ho Ho Ho and asking if we've all been good (I always shout out, "NOOOOOO!") and saying something about how the reindeer are all excited about pulling the sleigh. (Some year, I want Santa to say, "And remember, boys and girls, if you go outside late and see my reindeer in the sky, don't stand underneath as they fly by!") Anyway, all the stores on the green have big sales and usually some poor schmuck standing on the sidewalk selling stuff or handing out free cocoa or mulled cider. It's really quite fun.

So anyway, we've got quite a lot to do, and still have to buy our tree and decorate the house. I don't do a lot, but I like some lights on the bushes outside, a wreath by the door, and a creche on the coffee table (no mantle over the fireplace).

My mother had a rule that we couldn't have any Xmas decorations up until 1 December, and no tree until the 20th at the earliest. It came down on New Year's Day, which I always found horribly depressing. There was one family on our street who cleaned up the dishes from Thanksgiving Dinner and then put up the Christmas tree. They took it down on Valentine's day--it was usually nothing but a skeleton by then. We compromise at my house. We put up the tree during the first week of December, and take it down when we feel like it in January, but not until after Epiphany. Or sometimes February. I think we left it up until 22nd February once--I was sick and horribly depressed, and the thought of putting away all the ornaments was overwhelming. Then again, there was one year I was deathly ill at Xmas, and went out with Mr. Thing at 8pm on 23rd December and said, "We take home the first tree we see." He's one of those who wants to go to half a dozen different places, trying to get a perfect tree at the lowest possible price. But I had a 102 degree fever and a sinus infection, and was in no mood to indulge him. Well, we took home the second tree we saw, because the first one was a Charlie Brown tree, and even sick as I was, I didn't want a tree that was four feet tall and had three branches, one of which was longer than the tree was tall. The tree we got was no prize, but I've found that once the ornaments and lights are on it, most trees look beautiful. I don't remember anything else about Christmas that year.

Then my daughter had a knack for getting sick on every major holiday for the first three years of her life, so I never got to celebrate anything much. God, I'm SO glad that's over!

Have you ever seen "A Charlie Brown Christmas"? Maybe it never made it to England. Anyway, it's an animated, hour-long cartoon based on the Peanuts comic strip. Charlie Brown is looking for a Christmas tree to use in his school Christmas show, and he buys this spindly little pine tree because he feels sorry for it. Everyone laughs at him, and he goes home feeling terrible. They come over to his house and decorate the tree, and it looks beautiful. Then they start singing a carol, and the viewers feel all warm and fuzzy.

The sort of thing John Cleese would say he hated, but secretly would think was very sweet and touching.

I like Charlie Brown, it's very cute, although I watched it ages ago!!!

As far as I remember it was a series, not just one film...

In the US, "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is as much a tradition as putting up the Christmas tree. That, and the old stop-action "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" with Burl Ives as Sam the Snowman. They even play "Holly Jolly Christmas" in the stores. I got drunk with a friend and watched Rudolph once. We cried when Clarisse sang, "There's Always Tomorrow" and when all the toys sang "Island of Misfit Toys". Not pretty.

I have a whole collection of Christmas movies. I'd better start watching them--I have less than 4 weeks! I've got "Scrooge" with Alistair Sim (the best version!), the two I mentioned above, Polar Express, Holiday Inn, Little Drummer Boy, White Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street (the old version), It's a Wonderful Life, and A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott as Scrooge. I don't really like the latter one that much--Alistair Sim really owns that role, though the other guy...what's his name? Oh--Reginald Owen. He did a good job. I didn't really like Barrymore's version--hard to do Scrooge convincingly from a wheelchair. Anyway, if nothing else works, "Little Drummer Boy" puts me in the Christmas spirit, despite being a bit of a bummer at the beginning. I mean, what were they thinking, showing the murder of his parents? They don't show that part nowadays. It's too long for commercial television, anyway, so they fill in with commercials. But I love the ending--just love it.

I had a book called...by Tomie dePaola..oh yes! "The Clown of God". It's about an old man who'd been a juggler all his life. He'd fallen on hard times and sought shelter in a monastery on Christmas eve. In gratitude, he decides to juggle for the statue of the frowning Virgin and her solemn little baby. He wants to make the baby happy for Christmas Eve. He juggles better than he has been able to in years, and dies just as he performs his most difficult trick. A monk runs to him and sees it's too late to save him, then looks at the statue--the baby is holding the juggler's golden ball, and smiling.

I just love stuff like that!

Yeah, Lozzy, me too...

You feel emotional because Christmas is when you're SUPPOSED to feel joy and love and generosity and kindness and unity with all mankind and faith and hope. And because you maybe don't feel that way, and it's hard to be reminded. Or because you understand how fragile it all is. Or because you do feel that way, and you have tears of gratitude. Or it's the jarring dissonance between what's *supposed* to be and what really is. Or something.

I guess i feel emotional because christmas is the best time of year - it's where families come together and spend that one special day with one another.

I always think about my dad at christmas time. I always wonder if he thinks of me. And this will be the first Christmas in 3 years where i have no boyfriend to visit. Anyway, i won't turn this thread into a depressant!

Let's just all be thankful for what we've got - Christmas makes me feel happy to be alive

I'm not particuarly looking for a boyfriend. I'm just saying - i was with him for 3 wonderful years and now we're not together anymore, so it's going to feel slightly emotional...

As for my dad - hmmm. I don't think he does. He has a new family now, he hasn't seen me in about 6 years.

Time for a picture!

Awwwww!!!!!!!!

Lame.

I don't kiss girls. Where's John?

I'll take Eric if John's not available.

I got hit on by three lesbians (three separate occasions) while I was in college. When I gently told one I wasn't gay, she got all offended and said, "Then why do you act like a dyke?!" I said that I wasn't aware that I did, and she said, "But you always wear pants, never wear makeup or jewelry, and, well, you just have that hard-ass attitude." I would have thought my drooling over various hot guys would have tipped them off, but it didn't. Maybe they thought I was closeted. Oh, well. Word got around campus that I wasn't gay, and then neither men NOR women hit on me.

I didn't learn much, either.

College really sucked.

But...i'm not gay!

I'm also tomboyish, and although, most people think I am gay, I'm not!!!

Feel free to eat the dogshit if you like, mrsthing.

All Cleeseboard discussions eventually degenerate to either sex, vomiting, or excrement. Or they die with a whimper, not a bang.


Did someone say "bang"?!

Well, I have small tits, but they've kept Mr. Thing happy for 21 years, and they fed my baby for 4 months, and she got fat and happy and had beautiful skin and shiny hair. Small, but powerful! I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME ROAR!!!


I am Mrs. Thing, watch me go crazy!

And...just to relate the sex to this thread...

Mrsthing, there are such things as alcoholic clinics you could visit you know...

'i am mrsthing, and i am an alcoholic'

My name is Lozzykinz.

I have big tits.

And i am very horny.

The postcards are incredibly funny!!!!!!!!!!!!