December 25, 2009

At the Christmas Inn...

DSC06455

... I hope you got everything you wanted.

41 comments:

Jason (the commenter) said...

Stuffed, yes.

Automatic_Wing said...

I had a wonderful Christmas.

Also got this delightful email from Amazon:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

As someone who has purchased or rated books by Joseph Conrad, you might like to know that The N-word of the Narcissus is now available. You can order yours for just $9.99 by following the link below.

The N-word of the Narcissus
Joseph Conrad
Price: $9.99
.

I'm half-tempted to order it just to see if they've actually gone through the entire book and replaced "nigger" with "n-word".

Ron said...

I got nuthin'...so I'm glad Christmas is over and done with.

EnigmatiCore said...

"I hope you got everything you wanted."

Maybe in a few hours.

Fred4Pres said...

My family is healthy. We had a good time today. I got everything I wanted. I hope you did too.

Irene said...

The little unicorn in the tree is shy!

Freeman Hunt said...

Happy kids, yes.

Also, there's not much cuter than a two year old requesting that his mother sing Bing Crosby songs at bedtime. The one thing cuter might be his joining in with her to sing them.

The Crack Emcee said...

"... I hope you got everything you wanted."

Yea, well, that hope and a little "change" didn't cut it this year. I'm with Ron:

Get it over with.

Shit, now I've got to face New Years,...

Fred4Pres said...

A very Colorado Christmas

H/T: Ace

I am blaming it on the egg nog.

Unknown said...

The Blonde is feeling better tonight; bad attack of GERD today and last night.

Anytime someone has the symptoms, the issue of heart attack is contemplated. No problem this time.

On another note, hope all the relatives got on well.

Synova said...

We ate our Christmas dinner in the livingroom watching Ghostbusters II. (We watched Ghostbusters yesterday because the kids hadn't seen it.) I bought a goose at Walmart and had to make fried onions for the green-bean casserole from scratch because I forgot to buy a can of them.

I miss family but we have never lived near enough to show up at all the typical family potlucks. The alternative is travel and staying over, which is a different sort of stressful production than making a pie, showing up to eat, and then going home again.

I think that humans thrive on ritual but that we aren't generally very good at creating that ritual without the knowledge that we "made it up" blunting the effectiveness of the ritual. Kids are hapless recipients of what seems to be immutable. Adults know better.

This is my theory... at least this year.

jaed said...

Possibly why old rituals are more compelling, and the ancienter the better. For a small child, anything that was going on before his or her birth is ancient (a year is so much longer when you're six than when you're sixty). When we're older I think we need to imagine all the past generations that have done and said just these actions and words for it to have the same awe-inspiring quality as "We did this before you wre born" has to a child.

traditionalguy said...

My brother in law (We are married to sisters) was over tonight and mentionned that the new movie Invictus is a wonderful movie. He is a smart man He is a Michigan native who actually invented the snowboard. Now he brings me new books he has read and we swap for what I have recently read. He is trying to buy a Kindle so our swaping may soon end. He said everyone was out of stock this week. Tonight the adults enjoyed after dinner talk in one room while the twenty somethings couples and their babies and toddlers carried on in the living room awaiting us to join them for the gift exchanges. It was encouraging that everyone wanted to be here. And to all a good night.

Fred4Pres said...

traditionalguy, is your brother in law Sherman Poppen?

AmPowerBlog said...

Merry Christmas, Ann!

vbspurs said...

TradGuy, speaking of Kindles, today Sarah Palin's autobio comes out on the Kindle (it was delayed for over a month). If someone wants to buy it, click here. It links to Althouse. It's $9.99.

Cheers,
Victoria

vbspurs said...

You call those Christmas decorations?? Where's Mao?

Cheers,
Victoria

traditionalguy said...

Fred 4 pres...Yes.

Peter Hoh said...

My wife and I started Christmas Day be digging out the pile of snow that the snow plow dumped in our driveway skirt.

On the plus side, it was on the plus side of freezing. On the down side, it was raining instead of snowing, making the snow heavier.

Family gathering postponed a day, as we weren't the only ones digging out.

chuck b. said...

I didn't get Lady Gaga's Fame Monster, so I'll have to buy it myself.

vbspurs said...

OMG, I was at my local CVS just now, and overheard the women in front of me discussing Lady Gaga. Now Chuck B. references her. I'm going to have to break down and actually find out who this chick is.

EnigmatiCore said...

Nope. Guess not.

chuck b. said...

Victoria, start here, I think (sorry about the commercials): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgKrzdaDQMw

Peter Hoh said...

Victoria: think Prince with better costumes. Musically, more glam-pop than rock.

save_the_rustbelt said...

Five days with my adorable grandsons, playing video games, reading books, watching Spongebob, and etc., topped off with the entire family gathering for a turkey dinner.

Best off all, we all got to our next destination before the bad weather caught up with us.

Best of the holidays to all of you.

chuck b. said...

Victoria, just rememembered (I think I misspelled that) this LA Times article which I think lays things out pretty well too, and is chock full of the wonderfully ridiculous things pop artists like to say:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-ca-lady-gaga13-2009dec13,0,233483.story

JAL said...

A good day. Slowly enjoying each other and the gifts needed, wanted, desired, and surprising.

Daughter and SIL headed back to TN in the morning (too short a visit, but work calls.)

Doctor Daughter worked up north. A nice slow day in the ER.

Army son in Iraq celebrated Christmas with his wife via Skype. Then he went to bed.

Time to listen to music inspired by the history changing birth of Jesus Christ and be glad. Quiet, but glad.

BJM said...

A very quiet day here after a big gathering last night. We camped out in bed most of the day, sipped hot toddies, read and generally relaxed, just the two of us.

An excellent Christmas.

btw-love the old fashioned tree Althouse; ours is much the same, each ornament a memory.

Chip Ahoy said...

An quick explanation of maths.

RLB_IV said...

I received a gift I never would have ever thought I would receive. My brothers son gave me a lava lamp. He gave his dad one and his mom gave him one. I've been chuckling all day.

I need a steel, no steel under any tree. Oh well, a Wonderful day anyway.

Merry Christmas

Penny said...

"At the Christmas Inn..."

So that "must have" Douglas fir? How did that make you feel exactly, Althouse?

Penny said...

"... I hope you got everything you wanted."

Well? Not exactly.

Was I supposed to want a Douglas fir too?

vbspurs said...

Thanks for the Lady Gaga links, guys! :)

Michael Haz said...

We had a very interesting Christmas because it was gift-free.

The extended family includes some new home owners, college and grad students, a few elderly living on retirement income, a couple of recently unemployed ad some first-jobbers.

We decided in November to forgo Christmas gifts this year and simply enjoy each other's company on Christmas Eve. Surprisingly, no one balked at the gift-free idea, and there was a heck of a lot of enthusiasm for the idea.

It helped that our youngest members are high school juniors and seniors, but even they got into the spirit. One took the money she had saved and donated it to an animal shelter in the family name.

It would not have worked if we has young kids in the family.

Some family members from other parts of the country that we hadn't seen in several years made the trip home. Turns out that the trip was doable, but the cost of all the gifts wasn't, so going gift-free actually enabled a few people to make it home for Christmas.

We had a wonderful evening. Much happiness, a table groaning with appetizers, cookies, etc that people brought, games, stories, photos, laughter.

The Christmas morning buzz was that it may have been the best Christmas in years, and the tradition of simply being there, stress-free, not worrying about how much money was spent on gifts for a every member of a large family, will be out standard for years to come.

Babies, toddlers, grade, and middle-schoolers exempted, of course.

rhhardin said...

A little sun on the Christmas soccer ball.

michaele said...

Our daughter attended a Christmas party in San Francisco that had a white elephant gift swap. The gift that evoked the loudest laughter (great howls of laughter, in fact)was Sarah Palin's Going Rogue. It was gift #8 and our daughter was #28 (out of 30) so when her turn finally came, she claimed the book from it's initial recipient. She explained she was travelling to her parents' house in TN and she would take Sarah to a place where she would be more welcome and appreciated. The crowd seemed to approve of Sarah moving on to a red state.

The Drill SGT said...

The disagreements have opened a fault line between a desire for an early exit among several senior officials at the White House and a conviction among military commanders that victory is still achievable on their terms.

The differences are complicating implementation of the new strategy. Some officers have responded to the July 2011 date by seeking to accelerate the pace of operations, instead of narrowing them. At the White House, a senior administration official said, the National Security Council is discussing ways to increase monitoring of military and State Department activities in Afghanistan to prevent "overreaching."


The Obmama boys are already writing the press releases on our withdrawal and the military is trying to win before being ordered out...the Losers are gonna have to put some more hurdles and reviews in place to prevent trying to hard

Michael Haz said...

Drill SGT - Thanks for the link. The ONLY time B+ worries about spending is when it might result in a military victory v

ricpic said...

Kids are hapless recipients of what [ritual] seems to be immutable.

Hapless? Speaking for this kid I am forever grateful for the absolute security that our family get togethers, which seemed as certain and eternal as the sun's rising, brought me. Can I ever be grateful enough to my aunt Rose and uncle Carl, the first among equals of all the sisters (my mother had four and Rose was the oldest) and brothers-in-law, and all their children, all my beloved cousins, who would gather at their marvelously ample and gemutlich home at the ritual times of the year, every year? No, I cannot. People like that and the way they have of keeping the rituals hold the world together.

JAL said...

Ahhh rituals.

Some of our Christmas tradition / rituals have stayed with us from my FOO. All three of us kids crave a solid blue outdoor Christmas tree with a single white light on top. (I have discovered C-9 blue LEDs .. one can afford to do a 25 foot tree and wow ....)

In our childhood home we had red votive candles in each window between the doublehung windows and the storm windows. So we went to sleep at Christmas time with flickering lights on the ceiling.

When we would come home in the evenings there would be our house with its tree and the soft red lights in each window.

Something very beautiful.

All three of us remember that positively and have tried to continue it -- in our age of thermopanes, a task made difficult if not impossible. I think I still have one of the original glasses.

There is a sense of continuity, and for those of us who are Christians, worship, in our demonstrations and continuance of rituals.

Our routine the morning of Christmas also continues from my childhood family. There is a order with stockings, pancake breakfast, reading the Christmas narrative from one of the gospels, and then a one by one enjoyment of the material blessings we share with each other. However big or small.

So our family, this year spread over the world, celebrates. And looks forward to 2010.

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