I don’t recognize either the man or the young girl in the photo. Since my grandmother worked in a photography studio long ago, it may be that these two people are merely strangers, but the photograph is undeniably endearing.

The little girl believes in him so fully, despite his lack of a bowl full of jelly. She is entirely unaware of the camera and is focused on Santa completely.

May all of us have as magical of a Christmas as this little girl from the past!

Just like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, I systematically watched every iteration.

Merry Christmas!

Photo Via: Christmas Image by marycafferty on Photobucket

I found these bubble lights at Hobby Lobby the other day. My grandma used to have some on her Xmas tree, so they made me feel closer to her. For only twelve bucks, I was able to bring my grandma back to life, if only for a second. I’m continually amazed at the power physical objects have to connect me with my past.

Here’s another good one called Electronic Santa by Blazer Force:

These songs and a bunch of others are available for free at Target’s website. I guess that’s who the commercial was for…

• Target Holiday Album: Download all 14 songs

I don’t care for scrapbooking since I do all of that memory stuff digitally, but I do like playing with GIMP and making pretty things. This is about as ambitious as I get, though.

Feel free to download this and put it on your own door if you want!

My mom, Stacey and I were at a party on Christmas Eve. A friend from my mom’s work was throwing the party and Mom wanted to drop by quickly to say hi to her. We were only going to stay a moment. I remember being worried that we might get “demonized” if we went to a Christmas party, but my mom said it was okay. We weren’t participating in it, so we would be safe.

We walked into the friend’s house from the cold and the noise knocked us over. There were tons of kids there, playing loudly. My mom said we were only going in for a minute, so don’t bother taking off your coat. Grownups always forget how long it takes to talk to somebody, however. I remember standing in the warm room with my coat on waiting for them to finish talking.

How come grownups can talk SO MUCH?!

It’s like they LIKE talking. I contemplated the idea that talking might not be as boring to grownups as it was to me when the mayhem started.

While I was sweltering in my winter coat next to the heat of a wood stove, the kids had all arranged themselves on the floor of the living room. Each child had a present in front of them. An adult counted down and all the kids immediately started ripping open their respective packages. Paper was flying with noisy disrespect for the beautiful wrapping. I watched in awe as the kids went from present to present, opening in a frenzy. They didn’t even stop to play with each toy. They just opened and opened and opened.

I felt like I was going to throw up.

You might think that I felt left out. All these children were opening gifts and I didn’t have anything. There are many times in my life that I felt left out because I was a Jehovah’s Witness, but this wasn’t one of those times.

I was disgusted (and probably a little overheated from the wood stove and my winter coat).

After the divorce, when we were able to have our own Christmas celebrations, our gift unwrapping was very different from that night. No matter how excited I got by all of my presents, I never let myself get into that frenzied mayhem of present unwrapping, partially out of disgust for what I saw that Christmas Eve, but mostly out of gratitude for all of those Christmases I missed.

The Night Santa Went Crazy by Weird Al Yankovic

If that wasn’t good enough for you, how about this one?

Christmas At Ground Zero by Weird Al Yankovic

I love Christmas songs that are just a little different. I’ve been listening to Christmas at Ground Zero every year for about twenty years now. It’s a classic to me.

This prototype is actually for sale and you can buy it here:

• Women’s Clothing for Sale from Twin Roses Designs!

After a Steampunk Halloween, I am almost tempted to have a Steampunk Christmas!

It’s fun to see the way Christmas was viewed in the past. The idea of waiting until Christmas Eve until they get the tree is surprising to me. My family always put up the tree on Thanksgiving. Of course, ours was an artificial tree, so it wouldn’t get all dry and fire hazardy over the month.

It was hard for me to watch the whole episode because Ozzy keeps getting Christmas obligations piled on him. I’m the kind of raunchy grump who would scare away too much responsibilities or just say no outright, so it was hard for me to watch Ozzy be such a push-over.