Santa Has Style

Recently you may have seen a post on my girlfriends blog about my Santa Claus hat and how I wear it all the time. It was actually only the title of the post and the blog itself had nothing to do with Santa, hats, or fashion of any kind. That being said, here is my rebuttal.

Santa hats are awesome. They are comfortable, very soft to the touch, and one hat can fit several different heads making their carbon footprint much less due to fewer sizes needed. If you are jogging they can serve as signal to surrounding vehicles that you are there, similar to a reflective vest, with their bright red color and glistening furry sheen. Plus they are much more fashionable than an ugly vest.

But probably the best reason for wearing a Santa hat every waking (and sometimes sleeping) moment of the day is...have you ever seen someone who looked sad wearing a Santa hat? Or for that matter, don't you start to feel good when you see a Santa hat coming your way? I do. Which is why I will continue to spread the love all around with the good old red, white, and.....white.

To you Santa 'haters' out there, at least you'll stay warm with the lump of coal that will come in your stocking.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Traaaditiooooooon!!

That's supposed to be from the play/movie "Fiddler on the Roof". There is a song in which he sings about tradition or something. I don't really know, it's been a while since I've seen it.

I thought I might talk a little today about tradition. Specifically, Christmas traditions. My family has quite a few and they are all awesome. One of the first things about the Christmas season is we NEVER....EVER....EVER listen to Christmas songs until after Thanksgiving is over. That also extends to Christmas movies. Unless they are sort of fringe movies, for instance Die Hard. Die Hard (the first one) actually takes place on Christmas eve and there are a lot of Christmassy things that happen like, well, John McClain shoots this terrorist in the chest six times and then puts a Santa hat on him and writes "Now I've got a machine gun. Ho, Ho, Ho" in sharpie on his chest. Doesn't that just put you in that ol' holiday spirit!

A lot of people wait till after Thanksgiving to start getting into the Christmas spirit, so here's another. We always go out, about a week before Christmas, and drive around looking at Christmas lights all while singing carols. Normally it's the Muppet Christmas album with John Denver, which is one of our favorites, but we've been known to throw in another CD from time to time. This year we will definitely listen to something different, but I'll talk about that in a bit.

On of the most important things is Christmas movies....we have a schedule. Every night we watch a different Christmas movie such as: Home Alone, Home Alone 2, The Santa Claus(e), Muppet Christmas Carol, Elf, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (claymation), and always on Christmas eve a Mickey's Christmas Carol or as we also call it "a Dobbie Doin Doin". It would take too long to explain that one, but just know that it isn't baby talk and has something to do with how Donald Duck talks. Those other movies can go in any order and once in a while we'll throw some different ones in the mix, but those are our mainstays.

The last tradition we have is reading "Twas the Night Before Christmas" on the night before Christmas. We each have our own boxes of ornaments that we've collected over the years (which is actually another tradition) and after Christmas eve when we finished reading the book, we put the book in one of our (my brothers' and sister's) boxes and they have to read it the next year. Although, there have been at least two or three years that I've had to read it so I don't know how that worked out.

NOW. The NEW tradition that will become widespread across the nation, and definitely in my house, is listening to the Bob Dylan Christmas album. For those of you who haven't heard it...it's awesome....ly bad. I mean he did what that guy in "Love Actually" did and make a total crap Christmas album that should have never been made and then just marketed it as ridiculous. It actually may combine with another tradition that we have in my family, which is singing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" in church, like the Peanuts gang. If you've seen Charlie Brown Christmas you know at the end they sing that song, and the way they are drawn makes it appear that they are looking straight up to the sky while singing. So in church....we do that. Makes my dad laugh every time. My mom actually scolded us once or twice, but it was worth it.

So this year I think we will sing like the Peanuts gang....but with a Bob Dylanesque voice. Which is to say horribly bad.

I'd like to hear from you guys what your family traditions or friend traditions are. Hit me up with some comments and the best one will get a guest blog spot!!

Merry Christmas