Christmas meme
Dec. 6th, 2011 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
next_to_normalSnagged from fenchurch.
1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Hot chocolate. I like the occasional egg nog around Christmas, but I'll drink hot chocolate all winter long.
2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? When I was a kid, the unwrapped presents were from Santa, and the wrapped ones were from my family. This was presumably to avoid the Wrapping Paper Debacle that occurred with my cousin, Devi, who was three years older than me and dangerously inquisitive. At a very young age, she apparently asked her parents why the presents from Santa were wrapped in the same wrapping paper as the ones from Mom and Dad. My aunt had to tell her that Santa doesn't have time to buy all the wrapping paper, so parents have to send wrapping paper to him. This, naturally, resulted in my aunt having to mail rolls of wrapping paper to the North Pole every year in order to keep up the Santa charade.
3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? White on the tree and colored on the house (my parents' house, that is. I don't put lights up).
4. Do you hang mistletoe? Nope.
5. When do you put your decorations up? Usually the weekend after Thanksgiving, I help my parents put up their tree, but this year we had the wedding, so the tree was already up by the time I got home. I'll probably decorate my place sometime this week.
6. What is your favorite holiday dish? Christmas cookies! Haha, we don't really have any specific holiday food, because the menu changes depending on whose house we're at. My mom once tried to do the traditional Italian "seven fishes" Christmas Eve dinner, but that didn't go over too well with the non-seafood eating folks, so she usually makes lasagna when it's her year. Last year's dinner was actually hilariously complicated, given all the various dietary restrictions in my family (which have now doubled, since my cousin married into a gluten-free family).
7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child? Hmmmm. Well, there was the year our Christmas tree fell over and set off the burglar alarm in the middle of the night and scared the shit out of us. Not sure that's really a favorite, but it's definitely the most memorable, hahaha. There's also the year we got the ginormous Griswold tree that my dad and I had to chop down ourselves and then drag a mile or so through the mud back to the car. We had to hose the thing down once we got it home, only to discover that it was too tall (for the 12-foot ceiling. This was a huge damn tree) and my dad had to cut off the top of the tree in order to get the angel on without her head being smashed against the ceiling.
8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I cannot for the life of me remember WHY I was thinking about it in October, but one night I was getting ready for bed, and my mom came in to say goodnight, and I asked her if Santa was real or just made up. I guess I just had a hunch or something. Her reaction? "Did Devi tell you that?!" Heh, poor Devi gets blamed for everything. Anyway, I know it was October because there is an angst-ridden entry about it in my diary about it, LOL.
9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Not usually. I always WANT to, but Mom usually says we have to wait. :(
10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? My parents have gone to this whole "white and gold" theme for the last several years with their tree. White and gold balls, plastic snowflakes, white spray-painted pine cones, etc. When we first decided to do it, my mom went through this manic "what can I spray??" phase where she spray-painted a lot of our old ornaments white so she could use them, LOL. Now whenever she buys ornaments (usually as souvenirs from places we've been to), she tries to find a white or gold one, but we've gotten a bit flexible. My tree, which I've only had since last year, is decorated with blue and silver balls (to match my apartment), snowflakes, and then whatever I pilfered from my parents' collection of unacceptably colored ornaments.
11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? If it gets me a day off work? LOVE IT. If I have to drive my car? Dread. During DC's Snowpocalypse, I did not go grocery shopping for three weeks because it meant I'd have to dig my car out of the parking lot.
12. Can you ice skate? Nope. I tried it when I was in middle school, but I have horribly weak ankles. They just don't support me. (I also fall off high heels and have twisted my ankles more times than I can count.)
13. Do you remember your favorite gift? I forget how old I was - young enough to still believe in Santa - and my dad made me a dollhouse. It was fucking amazing. Y'all know how handy my dad is, right? (If not, see the HGTV in real life tag, lol.) Well, he built this thing with three stories, with working electricity and everything; he even used leftover wallpaper from our actual house on the walls! But it wasn't until YEARS later that I knew how much work he put into it. They told me it was from Santa! :( It's still at home in my old bedroom, in fact, but the cat has been slowly destroying it, sticking her paws through the windows and knocking off shingles and porch railings and such. Which is sad,and further proof that my mother loves that cat more than me, because it is incredible.
14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you? Being with family. I don't go home often, so it's nice.
15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? Cooooooookies. My parents always make the same kind every year, but they are SO GOOD OM NOM NOM.
16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Cooooooookies, lol. Actually, I used to LOVE baking cookies with my parents. We were a fabulous team. Now they do it without me, though, since I'm not home. :(
17. What tops your tree? Nothing. My tree is only 4.5 feet tall and it's a little Charlie Browny. I tried to put a star on top last year, but it was too top-heavy and it fell over. So.
18. Which do you prefer giving or receiving? Both? Haha, I love finding the perfect gift for someone (and I sometimes drive myself crazy trying to come up with ideas). But. Getting stuff is also fun. #sometimes I'm superficial and greedy
19. Candy Canes: I like them, but I'm not crazy about them.
20. Favorite Christmas show? Christmas Vacation and Charlie Brown Christmas.
21. Saddest Christmas Song? Hmm. "Please, Daddy, Don't Get Drunk This Christmas" or "Coventry Carol," probably.
22. What is your favorite Christmas song? The entirety of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's repertoire. Can I say that? Generally, I like the traditional hymns better than the godawful pop music they play on the radio, but TSO has got it going on (maybe because they do fabulous rock versions of traditional songs?).
fenchurch. 1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Hot chocolate. I like the occasional egg nog around Christmas, but I'll drink hot chocolate all winter long.
2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? When I was a kid, the unwrapped presents were from Santa, and the wrapped ones were from my family. This was presumably to avoid the Wrapping Paper Debacle that occurred with my cousin, Devi, who was three years older than me and dangerously inquisitive. At a very young age, she apparently asked her parents why the presents from Santa were wrapped in the same wrapping paper as the ones from Mom and Dad. My aunt had to tell her that Santa doesn't have time to buy all the wrapping paper, so parents have to send wrapping paper to him. This, naturally, resulted in my aunt having to mail rolls of wrapping paper to the North Pole every year in order to keep up the Santa charade.
3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? White on the tree and colored on the house (my parents' house, that is. I don't put lights up).
4. Do you hang mistletoe? Nope.
5. When do you put your decorations up? Usually the weekend after Thanksgiving, I help my parents put up their tree, but this year we had the wedding, so the tree was already up by the time I got home. I'll probably decorate my place sometime this week.
6. What is your favorite holiday dish? Christmas cookies! Haha, we don't really have any specific holiday food, because the menu changes depending on whose house we're at. My mom once tried to do the traditional Italian "seven fishes" Christmas Eve dinner, but that didn't go over too well with the non-seafood eating folks, so she usually makes lasagna when it's her year. Last year's dinner was actually hilariously complicated, given all the various dietary restrictions in my family (which have now doubled, since my cousin married into a gluten-free family).
7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child? Hmmmm. Well, there was the year our Christmas tree fell over and set off the burglar alarm in the middle of the night and scared the shit out of us. Not sure that's really a favorite, but it's definitely the most memorable, hahaha. There's also the year we got the ginormous Griswold tree that my dad and I had to chop down ourselves and then drag a mile or so through the mud back to the car. We had to hose the thing down once we got it home, only to discover that it was too tall (for the 12-foot ceiling. This was a huge damn tree) and my dad had to cut off the top of the tree in order to get the angel on without her head being smashed against the ceiling.
8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I cannot for the life of me remember WHY I was thinking about it in October, but one night I was getting ready for bed, and my mom came in to say goodnight, and I asked her if Santa was real or just made up. I guess I just had a hunch or something. Her reaction? "Did Devi tell you that?!" Heh, poor Devi gets blamed for everything. Anyway, I know it was October because there is an angst-ridden entry about it in my diary about it, LOL.
9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Not usually. I always WANT to, but Mom usually says we have to wait. :(
10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? My parents have gone to this whole "white and gold" theme for the last several years with their tree. White and gold balls, plastic snowflakes, white spray-painted pine cones, etc. When we first decided to do it, my mom went through this manic "what can I spray??" phase where she spray-painted a lot of our old ornaments white so she could use them, LOL. Now whenever she buys ornaments (usually as souvenirs from places we've been to), she tries to find a white or gold one, but we've gotten a bit flexible. My tree, which I've only had since last year, is decorated with blue and silver balls (to match my apartment), snowflakes, and then whatever I pilfered from my parents' collection of unacceptably colored ornaments.
11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? If it gets me a day off work? LOVE IT. If I have to drive my car? Dread. During DC's Snowpocalypse, I did not go grocery shopping for three weeks because it meant I'd have to dig my car out of the parking lot.
12. Can you ice skate? Nope. I tried it when I was in middle school, but I have horribly weak ankles. They just don't support me. (I also fall off high heels and have twisted my ankles more times than I can count.)
13. Do you remember your favorite gift? I forget how old I was - young enough to still believe in Santa - and my dad made me a dollhouse. It was fucking amazing. Y'all know how handy my dad is, right? (If not, see the HGTV in real life tag, lol.) Well, he built this thing with three stories, with working electricity and everything; he even used leftover wallpaper from our actual house on the walls! But it wasn't until YEARS later that I knew how much work he put into it. They told me it was from Santa! :( It's still at home in my old bedroom, in fact, but the cat has been slowly destroying it, sticking her paws through the windows and knocking off shingles and porch railings and such. Which is sad,
14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you? Being with family. I don't go home often, so it's nice.
15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? Cooooooookies. My parents always make the same kind every year, but they are SO GOOD OM NOM NOM.
16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Cooooooookies, lol. Actually, I used to LOVE baking cookies with my parents. We were a fabulous team. Now they do it without me, though, since I'm not home. :(
17. What tops your tree? Nothing. My tree is only 4.5 feet tall and it's a little Charlie Browny. I tried to put a star on top last year, but it was too top-heavy and it fell over. So.
18. Which do you prefer giving or receiving? Both? Haha, I love finding the perfect gift for someone (and I sometimes drive myself crazy trying to come up with ideas). But. Getting stuff is also fun. #sometimes I'm superficial and greedy
19. Candy Canes: I like them, but I'm not crazy about them.
20. Favorite Christmas show? Christmas Vacation and Charlie Brown Christmas.
21. Saddest Christmas Song? Hmm. "Please, Daddy, Don't Get Drunk This Christmas" or "Coventry Carol," probably.
22. What is your favorite Christmas song? The entirety of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's repertoire. Can I say that? Generally, I like the traditional hymns better than the godawful pop music they play on the radio, but TSO has got it going on (maybe because they do fabulous rock versions of traditional songs?).
no subject
Date: Dec. 6th, 2011 09:55 pm (UTC)This meme looks incredible, and it got me into "shamelessly peeking how people celebrate Christmas in other countries" mode ;). Your dollhouse sounds just amazing! Cookies \o/
I'm sorry you can't go ice skating :((((.
no subject
Date: Dec. 7th, 2011 08:05 pm (UTC)Hahaha, because it's not traditional? My family's Italian, so they can't argue with lasagna. :) What do you usually have?
no subject
Date: Dec. 7th, 2011 08:39 pm (UTC)Here are some examples of traditional dishes my family usually has: kutia, makiełki (although we don't make it exactly like here), barszcz. There are also various fish dishes (mostly carp; my Mom just fries it, but my Granny bakes it in some sort of ale sauce, and my other Granny makes amazing carp soup) and cakes (gingerbread and makowiec are the most "traditional", but anything goes in cake departament; we usually have cheesecake instead of gingerbread, and this year I'm also plotting to bake something special, but I can't decide what exactly). My family is not particulary traditional; this Christmas Eve madness is a national thing.
no subject
Date: Dec. 7th, 2011 08:54 pm (UTC)We usually have two separate dinners - Christmas Eve with my dad's family and Christmas day with my mom's family. My mom tries to only cook one of those and foist the other off on someone else. :)
I would say that turkey or ham is probably the "traditional" American Christmas meal, but since we've just had turkey for Thanksgiving, people seem to feel better about being flexible on Christmas.
no subject
Date: Dec. 8th, 2011 06:26 am (UTC)Thanksgiving turkey would definitely mess with Christmas menu for you :). We make most of the Christmas Eve stuff only once a year, so some people are actually waiting for them. I'm not a great fan of neither fish nor poppy seed, so I just stuff myself with my mother's trademark cabbage dish (I haven't been able to find a decent description in English :() and wait for Christmas Day, when actual meat happens ;).
no subject
Date: Dec. 7th, 2011 01:05 am (UTC)After hearing about your past Thanksgiving this is just too funny!
The entirety of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's repertoire.
When I first moved out of my parent's house, I went through an Anti-Christmas thing for a few years where I would refuse to play all Christmas music...except stuff done by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Loreena McKinnett's version of Good King Wenceslas.
no subject
Date: Dec. 7th, 2011 08:09 pm (UTC)(Of course, there's also the time we drove to my aunt's house with my cousin's Easter basket still on the roof of the car. Or the time my cousin's dog ate all the chocolate in her Easter basket. Or the layer cake that looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa for my mom's birthday. Or the time I dropped an entire tray of hors d'oeuvres on the floor... yeah, we are kind of accident-prone.)
no subject
Date: Dec. 7th, 2011 01:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Dec. 7th, 2011 08:12 pm (UTC)*Mom and Dad exchange guilty looks*
no subject
Date: Dec. 7th, 2011 01:57 am (UTC)My parents said that Santa wrapped the presents when he delivered them so he could make sure to match the wrapping paper, which sounded good to me when I was a kid.
And I could totally see having lasagna for Christmas! When I was a kid, we always had "non-traditional" food for Christmas... which meant one year my dad was out grilling steaks in six inches of snow (with more falling all around him).
Hmmm... thinking I need to upload a Christmas themed icon here!
no subject
Date: Dec. 7th, 2011 08:14 pm (UTC)Yeah, I need to get my Christmas icons out, too...