Welcome to the Christmas edition of "Getting to know your friends"
1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? For under the tree, it is mostly wrapping paper. For gifts to be delivered at Christmas social situations, mostly gift bags
2. Real tree or artificial? I used to always have a real tree. Since I’ve been the one in charge of putting them up and taking them down by myself, mostly, for the past 7 years, I decided three years ago to be artificial. Mom helped buy one and got a gi-normous tree and I really didn’t like putting it up or taking it down. We donated that one this year and got a smaller (4 ft) that can sit atop a table.
3. When do you put up the tree? Well, sort of when I feel like it… This year, I was supposed to put it up yesterday, but we went shopping instead. So, it’ll probably go up next weekend… but it has been as late as Christmas Eve.
4. When do you take the tree down? Generally after the Epiphany (though one year it was up until February – everything else was down, but I just wasn’t able to get myself together enough to take that old, dead tree out of the house by myself. Eventually I wrapped it in an old table cloth and tugged it out to the woods behind the house!)
5. Do you like eggnog? Not particularly, though my mom usually mixes up a batch from her father’s recipe and I’ll take taste.
6. Favorite gift received as a child? I think my childhood was too long ago to remember! As a young teen (about 13), my favorite gift was the 8-track stereo with turntable to go in my very own room that I also got that year!! :) As an older teen (Junior Year in HS), my favorite gift was my very own Singer Sewing Machine.
7. Do you have a nativity scene? Yes.
8. Hardest person to buy for? Every year this is different, but usually because the gift I’d like to give someone is out of my budget, not because the person is hard to figure. I have had years where every other gift I see would be great for the same one person… I had to keep remembering that I already HAD their present!
9. Easiest person to buy for? My children – now 18 and 16 – because they tell me exactly what they want! :)
10. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? I’m a difficult person to fit, clothes-wise, even as a child I wore the plus sizes. Plus sizes in the mid ‘60s meant clingy stretch pants that made chubby little girls look so much chubbier… those three years of polyester plus size ‘ski-style’ pants were the worst gifts… especially since I was a child and could not ‘re-gift’ or donate them and I HAD to wear them for the visits with the aunt that gave them…. So as much as I hate to grouse… while I love the giver, I really felt ‘ugly’ in those clothes.
11. Mail or email Christmas cards? Don’t e-mail and only mail as many as I get done – which generally means relatives that get pictures of the kids and friends that send them to me – at least that has been the pattern the last two years. I have the greatest intentions every year. I think – I’ll do a newsy letter and send it out to everyone, personalize the cards, etc. You know what they say about good intentions… I’m a great paver is all I can say!
12. Favorite Christmas Movie? Christmas in Connecticut, White Christmas
13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Since I’m mostly finished, I’m thinking I never stop from one year to the next! :) If I see something unique and it’s July, I buy it and put it away. So far, I’ve remember all those pre-“buying season” gifts. I figure someday, I’ll be like my mom. Not a year has gone by that she didn’t leave a gift or two in the closet!
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Hmmm… only in a “donate it to charity” way that I can remember. A couple of relatives that live away send us gifts and even though I suggest gift cards, they always have to send something. This gift is often clothes that are too small or too something – they’d be good for others, but not for us. These things have been given to the clothing drives at Church.
15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Chocolate chip cookies – toll house, made with real butter! Wwha-at? The question didn’t ask what my favorite Christmas MEAL was! Heheheheh.
This year our dinner will be filet mignon – bucking the traditional turkey and all the trimmings (Christmas has forever been a repeat of Thanksgiving). Just four or five us this year, so a steak and potato dinner sounded yummy!
16. Clear lights or colored on the tree? Colored, clear and NOT BLINKING!
17. Favorite Christmas song? Peppermint Stick Parade by Bobby Vinton.
18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? This year we stay home. Sometimes we travel for dinner (a couple of hours), but mostly people have come here.
19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeers? You know, Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen, but do you recall, the most famous reindeer of all… Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer…
20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Used to be an angel and that was broken a few years ago. That same year, my older son was a teacher’s aid for the kindergarten religion classes and he made a fun foam nativity scene with the students. That has been our topper for the last few years. My mother must have forgotten because she told me she bought a star for our new tree this year… The tree isn’t up yet, so we’ll have to see what goes there.
21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Morning
22. Most annoying thing about this time of year? Well, I found this meme at Got Gauge and, I must admit, I like Phyl’s answer. I was going to borrow it from her (since she borrowed it from her sister, I figured that would be okay), but really the thing that bothers me the MOST is the music and decorations that start before Thanksgiving and end the day after Christmas. (I even know a few people that take their tree down Christmas night!) I can understand if you have a live tree and you are traveling or something… but really, the season doesn’t end on December 25th – it’s just beginning!!
Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New Year too!
To my readers that do not celebrate Christmas may your holidays be all you want them to be, whatever they are!
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