Category: Christmas

Several years ago, our children were going to start getting Christmas gifts for my wife and me. This was the first Christmas after my son had moved out of the house. The kids planned this change to our Christmas routine as a surprise. They would give us these gifts when we did our normal gift exchange on Christmas Eve. At that time our normal Christmas Eve routine was going to my father’s house and celebrating Christmas with him and my sister’s family, then coming home and exchanging gifts before we settled in to watch Santa Claus Conquers The Martians. My son, James, would stop by our house and ride with us to start the festivities at my dad’s.

I listen to a lot of Christmas music between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I have an iPod Classic that I load with my holiday music playlist.  There are a handful of albums in my collection that should be a requirement for anyone serious about Christmas music.  What Christmas playlist would be complete without Elvis and The Chipmunks?  I have a few Christmas albums in my collection that may not be in yours that I think you should at least know about.  I have put them into 3 categories: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.  This week I focus on The Ugly.

I listen to a lot of Christmas music between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I have an iPod Classic that I load with my holiday music playlist.  There are a handful of albums in my collection that should be a requirement for anyone serious about Christmas music.  What Christmas playlist would be complete without Elvis and The Chipmunks?  I have a few Christmas albums in my collection that may not be in yours that I think you should at least know about.  I have put them into 3 categories: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.  This week I focus on The Bad.

I listen to a lot of Christmas music between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I have an iPod Classic that I load with my holiday music playlist.  There are a handful of albums in my collection that should be a requirement for anyone serious about Christmas music.  What Christmas playlist would be complete without Elvis and The Chipmunks?  I have a few Christmas albums in my collection that may not be in yours that I think you should at least know about.  I have put them into 3 categories: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.  This week I focus on The Good.

When I was growing up, there was a family that lived just up the street from us that we spent a lot of time with.  The Steeles were my second family. They had 3 kids and their youngest daughter, Nan, was my age. Nan, my sister, Gina, and I played together almost daily.  Our parents would get together at least one night every weekend and play canasta.  Our families spent enough time together that it was natural for us to celebrate Christmas together and exchange gifts.  One year, one of us kids received a Spirograph set for Christmas. I think it was my sister. We all were playing with the Spirograph set.  We were at the Steele’s house and we were playing at a folding table that was set up in their living room. Our parents were at the kitchen table playing canasta. 

In a previous post, I’ve talked about playing Dirty Santa at a Christmas party.  I suggest that you look at this previous post if you don’t know the rules of the game. The Dirty Santa game became a staple of our department Christmas parties. Each year we would push the limits even more on what kind of gift was acceptable. One of the last years of this party, my wife and I set up a prank as part of the game and it worked perfectly.

In previous posts, I have talked about Christmas gifts at work. “Dirty Santa” gift swaps became a staple of the department Christmas parties we had several years back. For those of you unfamiliar with how these swaps work, the rules are simple. Each person brings a wrapped gift. There is usually a targeted dollar amount for the gifts. Slips of numbered paper are drawn by each person. The person with number 1 choses one of the gifts. The person with number 2 can either select a new gift or steal the gift from the first person selected. When both people have a gift, the next person takes a turn until everyone has a gift.  There are usually rules about how many times a gift can be stolen before it’s taken out of circulation. And you usually cannot take back a gift that was just taken from you.