The Misadventures of a Native New Yorker

Happy Chanukkah, everybody!!! Time to celebrate with latkes or jelly donuts or both, whichever you prefer. Light a menorah if you swing that way, too! ;)

Speaking of the holidays, alyxbradford, one of redstapler's many brilliant friends, wrote this positively brilliant essay on the history of Christmas , which I encourage you all to read.

An excerpt:

But, by the early 19th century, Christmas was almost dead. A few centuries of tension between Catholics and Protestants in England and on the Continent had taken a lot of the joy out of it, and America in the wake of the Revolution disdained it as an English tradition. Y'know who brought it back? Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol is credited with saving Christmas as a holiday. If you've ever read the original, there's not a lot of God-talk in it -- no more than the offhand statements about Divine Providence that permeate pretty much everything written in that era. Certainly the spirits aren't trying to tell Scrooge he needs to go to church on Christmas Day, or think about baby Jesus. What does Dickens emphasize? The same things the medieval folk did: family gatherings, food and drink, dancing, games, and a festive generosity of spirit. A pretty secular holiday, really -- and that was the instigation for popularizing the phrase "Merry Christmas".

Sounds like a good suggestion. And I have plans to make a bit of merry myself this evening, badly needed, too, after the week I've had. I'm running on fumes at this point, and trying to make myself productive anyway. I'm starting to feel like the van in Little Miss Sunshine.

Thanks to the wonders of the internets I have a large chunk of my Christmas shopping done, no small relief. I'm hoping to maybe decorate a tiny bit this weekend, but I don't want to force J into anything. When one works in retail, the last thing one wants to see is more reminders of the blasted season when you get home. Still, I wouldn't mind a few garlands or such - we don't have much room for a tree.

So far I've been enjoying Christmas music and viewings of Love Actually. I should also bust out The Family Stone pretty soon, too, as that's become a new favorite of mine.

And now, back to work.