Christmas 2023

This is now my third musing on Christmas. As with the other two, I’m publishing it on Christmas Day.¹

My previous musings about Christmas have been fairly short. The first² was four sentences. Half of those were less than four words a piece.³ The second was a little longer, but focused almost exclusively on the liturgical readings.

Today, I’d like to focus a little on the traditions that my family has kept. As I grow older, I find that I’ve been thinking a lot more about what parts of my life I’d like to keep forever, what parts I wish never happened, and what I think served its purpose and is no longer needed.

Our Christmas mornings tend to start with cinnamon rolls. This past Thanksgiving, my little brother⁴ and I realized that we both had fond memories of orange rolls as children. We still are not entirely certain which family member we had the rolls for,⁵ but we do know why we stopped having them. In short, none of the extant adults in my family like them.⁶ I did not remember that, however, and got orange rolls for the morning after Thanksgiving.⁷ My little brother and I loved them, and so this year’s Christmas morning breakfast also included orange rolls.⁸

Moving slightly back in the chronology, we get matching pajamas as a family every year. We open them on Christmas Eve, and then we all wear them on Christmas day. A related tradition: the children take a photo with Santa every year. Once we reached an age that it stopped seeming reasonable to go to the Santa in town,⁹ we started taking them as a family on Christmas morning. We’ve now merged the two traditions, and it’s really fun getting to look back and see the siblings in matching clothes.

We do a gift exchange after the photos¹⁰, and then we make a quick breakfast and eat it. After that, we play a board game.¹¹ By that point, we’re all tired of each other¹², so we tend to be free until dinner. For some reason, I have no memories of what we historically eat for Christmas dinner.

All in all, I love the fact that my family’s Christmas is what it is. I’m sure that at least some portion of my attachment to the traditions comes from the fact that they’re the traditions that we have. If I had grown with others, I am sure that I would have loved them just as much.¹³

Draft 1

This is now my third musing on Christmas. As with the other two, I’m publishing it on Christmas Day.¹⁵ Apparently both of my musings on Christmas have been fairly short.

My initial musing, published in the initial iteration of this blog, was four sentences, half of which were under four words. My musing last year, being a combined Christmas and Reflection on Readings, was a little longer, and focused more on the liturgical aspect of the season.

This year, however, I am writing this musing early enough that I have time to actually think,¹⁶ and not on a Sunday.¹⁷ As a result, I find that I have more time to consider what I want to muse about.

So, what do I want to muse about? The book on the craft of writing suggests that it’s best to plan to spend half the time you have allotted to an essay on planning and half on actually writing. I don’t think that will be a part of my life for a while, but let’s try some of what they suggest.

One piece of advice was to do some free association. Christmas to Christmas movies to Scrooge. Christmas, advent, awaiting, Christmas, stockings, family, loved ones.

Texted wishes for a happy Christmas to friends¹⁹, and had some nice digital conversations with them. I spent time with family, which was lovely as always!²⁰ In particular, we played games as a family, had some meals together, and did a small gift exchange.

I’ve started writing this musing, which is something. I honestly think that may be literally everything that I’ve done today. Ok so maybe musing about today as a thing isn’t a great idea. My family’s reaction to me saying who all I was texting today makes me think a musing about that might not be welcome either.

That’s really it for today. So, let’s think about what Christmas in general means to me? Let’s see what that sparks. I guess the question is if I want to focus on the cultural or religious connotations that Christmas has for me.²¹

Having now made, eaten, and cleaned up from dinner, there’s probably something I can muse about combining my post about family recipes, the fact that we only use red potatoes for mashed potatoes, and the fact that no one on the internet will say they’re meant for that. However, I don’t really know if I can connect that to Christmas, especially today. It might be a good idea to think more about it for future musings about family recipes.

Ok so let’s try to make a coherent draft. I still haven’t figured out what I want to muse about. The writing book says that you should spend a few days on this process, but acknowledges that you may not always have the option to do so.

There’s the obvious, that the weather is changing as the climate gets worse. There’s the way that family traditions change. There’s the voice in my head that says this might be the last Christmas we have together.²² There’s the fact that life hasn’t really returned to a stasis since Covid? Idk let’s see what happens if we just go like that.

well, the 25 of December, at least. Whether I wrote them before the morning or after night began is up to consideration↩︎
2018↩︎
fewer than? in theory I know that words can be counted↩︎
hmm is this too much information to have publicly available? the existence of presumably two brothers↩︎
though we have some good ideas↩︎
adults means generations older than me. Yes, I do know that I’m an adult in basically any sense that people use. However↩︎
another tradition we have as a family↩︎
which I did promise to bring to a friend. I need to make sure to do that↩︎
ok, if you look at the photos, a few years after that point↩︎
there’s a few more photos that we take. I enjoy them, but would not be heart broken if they ceased↩︎
most years, there is a new board game in someone’s gifts. In the rest, we play a family favorites↩︎
in the “everyone is an introvert” way, not the other ways↩︎
though with the family that I have, I feel like some of the traditions we have are the carcinization equivalent↩︎
allegedly↩︎
well, the 25 of December, at least. Whether I wrote them before the morning or after night began is up to consideration↩︎
unlike 2018↩︎
unlike last year↩︎
might be something that’s worth thinking about sometime in the future↩︎
initially kith, which is obsolete except for kith and kin, which is like aid and abet. It means those familiar, and is same as couth, where we get uncouth from. Wow I love linguistic drift. I wonder how much the spelling versions of linguistic drift will stop in this literate, digital, and prescriptive era. Then again, we’ve had radio and audio recordings for a while and we still have shift of pronunciations and meanings, so it probably won’t prevent it. I can’t think of any words that have changed spelling in my lifetime, though. Maybe a few double words got broken, but that’s about it (a la alright versus all right)↩︎
we got the coziest set of matching pajamas ever! (note that coziness is comfort related, and so is actually somewhat negatively correlated with how warm the pajamas are, at least in this household↩︎
yes, I know, I should not have divided parts of me, just me. However, I live in 2023, which means that the secular and the sacred are fundamentally separated for nearly everyone↩︎
which will not be included, because still too personal↩︎

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Christmas 2023

Draft 2

Draft 1