Friday Five: Christmas Time Is Here

There is nothing in this world I love more than my family, and Christmas is the perfect holiday for family. With me in D.C. and my little brother in Hawaii, it's not easy getting us all together, so this is the first time in four years we've all been home for the holidays. This Friday Five is dedicated to the five members of my family and what I love about them loving Christmas:

My dad is like a little kid when it comes to bubble lights. I don't understand why he gets so excited about them (probably some childhood attachment, the same reason I love colored lights instead of plain white ones), but every year when he puts those strands on the tree and watches as they start bubbling for the first time all year, his face lights up with glee.

Like my dad and bubble lights, my mom can't get enough Nativity scenes. She loves collecting them and displaying them, and finding something unique about each one she gets. She has plush ones for little hands to play with, hand painted ones older than me, and special ones brought to her from all around the world. I think she likes being surrounded by reminders of why we celebrate this holiday season.

Music has always been a big part of our lives, with early exposure to everything from Wager to the Beatles and an abundance of music lessons and concerts and stereo systems. But it's my little brother who fills our home with the sounds of the season. The way he can play anything he picks up leaves me in awe (a talent my sister shares), and I can't think of a better sound in the world then him tuning up a guitar.

Holidays and food go hand in hand, but Christmas at home means a little something more when my sister bakes the pies. I don't have a picture of it, but she makes the most amazing egg nog pie that I look forward to every Christmas and desperately miss when I'm away. And the way she laughs with these little hiccups and quotes While You Were Sleeping at just the right moment makes her the best dinner companion in the world.

Tom may be a relatively new addition to our family, but he's certainly become an irreplaceable addition to the holiday season. He shares my love for games, so we've started our own little tradition of driving my sister crazy with our friendly competition. Whether I win or lose, I can't even tell you how much fun it is to play with him.

I hope all of you will be able to spend the holidays with those you love most. And if not, may you be able to be with them soon. Merry Christmas!

Christmas Traditions: Strange Music

It's no secret that I enjoy off-beat music, and when it comes to Christmas carols, I enjoy an array of songs. You might even say I have an eclectic taste in holiday music. Mixed into the 12 or so hours of Christmas music on my iPod, I have everything from Fall Out Boy to The King Singers, Brandi Carlile to 98 Degrees.

Here are a couple of my favorite Alternative Christmas songs:

"Winter Wonderland" by Phantom Planet
"Snowfall Music" by Carbon Leaf
"I Won't Be Home for Christmas" by Blink 182
"Oi to the World" by No Doubt
"Christmas Only Comes Once a Year" by MxPx
"All I Want for Christmas Is You" by My Chemical Romance
"Yule Shoot Your Eye Out" by Fall Out Boy
"Alone This Holiday" by The Used
"Let Me Sleep" by Pearl Jam
"Ex-Miss" by A New Found Glory

And my new favorite CD is Let It Snow Baby...Let It Reindeer by Relient K. Well, this CD has been out for a couple of years now, but I just discovered it last week and I can't stop listening to it.

What are some of your favorite holiday tunes?

Christmas Traditions: Christmas Adam

Because most of our family still lives in the Chicago area, there are a lot of extended family gatherings around the holidays. But when all of us kids started moving away from home, my mother began to insist on having at least one dinner--just the five of us--around Christmas.

Thus was born Christmas Adam, or the night before Christmas Eve.

It's really a no-frills holiday tradition filled with non-traditions. We eat some food, tell some jokes and make Mom wonder how all of us ended up with our dad's sense of humor. The dinner fare is always different, and sometimes we do it at my sister's house rather than my parents. Dad gets excited about the bubble lights on the tree, and Mom cries either because we're all together or because someone is missing.

Oh, yes, and we watch While You Were Sleeping. And the three of us kids spend the night together curled up on my sister's bed talking--even when we all lived together, it was always my sister's room.

P.S. I changed the title of my novel from a boring working title to a title I actually like. Thanks Melissa and Tom for the help!

Christmas Traditions: Stories

The other night I was talking to my sister about all the great Christmas movies we used to watch when we were kids, like One Magic Christmas starring Mary Steenburgen. And then my friends over at the PBS Booklights blog mentioned The Lump of Coal by Lemony Snicket, a short story I read and loved a few years ago. So that got me thinking about some of my favorite holiday stories from years gone by.

You really can't go wrong with a classic, and you can't be any more classic than the poem by Clement Clarke Moore "A Visit from St. Nicholas." It has been re-told everywhich way, from Tim Burton's ghoulish masterpiece to the Cajun version I was interoduced to while living in Louisiana years ago. But it is the version of the poem I had as a child that stands out in my mind more than any other.

When I was really little, we had this pop-up version of The Night before Christmas illustrated by Michael Hague. Because it was the only pop-up book we had, it would get read all year long. We read it so often I had it memorized from the time I was about four, and to this day I can still say the poem verbatim.

As mentioned above, I am a sucker for family Christmas movies. I cried like a baby the first time I saw The Family Stone on a plane trip from Salt Lake to New York, and nothing gets me laughing like While You Were Sleeping. But my very favorite Christmas movie isn't really a Christmas movie at all.

When I sit down to watch Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis, I know it's Christmas. Because I have missed a few Christmases with my family, the song Esther sings to her little sister Tootie about Christmas being more about who you have loved than where you are has a special meaning to me.

One of my best memories from high school is the Christmas play I was in. It was a modern retelling of A Christmas Carol in which Scrooge was a self-centered rock star bent on driving himself to an early, lonely grave complete with the dreadlock-sporting ghost of Bob Marley and a tofu turkey for the hippy Cratchits. I really wish I could remember the name of the play, but it was too long ago and I can't find it in my old journals either. Oh well.

I didn't have a big part, but I did have this really dramatic fainting scene at the beginning when the kid who was supposed to catch me wasn't paying attention and I hit my head on the stage. I don't blame him, really. I tend to fall and hit my head a lot--I've even knocked myself out a couple of times. But getting back to the topic at hand...

I LOVE Christmas music. Seriously, I have about 12 hours worth of Christmas music on my iPod. Everything from the King Singers to Fall Out Boy. And all of that music tells a different story of Christmas, whether it's a depressing story of love lost and loneliness, or a song totally focused of the miracle of a baby born in a stable.

To me, one of the most beautiful hymns of the season is It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. That song encompasses everything meaningful about the season. It speaks of tradition and peace, past and present, hope and fulfillment. The imagery is also so moving: "Still thru the cloven skies they come / With peaceful wings unfurled."

There is something so distinct about the stories written about Christmas. This is the time of year when everyone suspends their disbelief for just a moment and believes that magic and miracles and goodness really do exist in the world. We stretch our imagination and make ourselves a little vulnerable to feeling the spirit of Christmas, no matter if we believe in Christ or not.

And new stories of Christmas are still being created every year. Snowmen at Night by Mark and Caralyn Buehner is the perfect example of this.

What are some of your favorite Christmas stories? Are they books or songs or maybe even memories? Maybe it's a story a parent read to you or something you discovered one Christmas when you were far from home. But in this season of glad tides, I hope you are able to find joy and happiness in all your Christmas stories.