The Best Way to Spread Christmas Cheer...
Is Singing Loud for All to Hear
December is here! I am full-blown Buddy the Elf mode, decorating, singing Christmas jingles, wearing my holiday-themed sweatshirt, and dragging my family to every kitschy holiday event within a 60-mile radius.
This last weekend we broke out the box of Christmas decor and I felt both absolute joy and sheer terror as my children ran off to decorate the house clutching ornaments and decor made of glass and porcelain. There have been zero casualties to date, but there are still 20 more days to go until Christmas. Fingers crossed.
We are a chaotic and colorful family when it comes to holidays (and life in general). Our house and tree lights are the multi-colored kind. Our stockings are homemade and do not necessarily match. Our ornaments vary from pink flamingos, COVID Santa, and rubber jellyfish to hand-blown crystals. Some of the decorations are thrifted, some are relics of my childhood, and some are musical snowmen that are gifted to my children each year from a woman who I used to nanny for and I have yet to determine if this is an act of love or revenge.
One tiny little decoration is not from my childhood or my years as a parent but comes from those fuzzy years between.
When I was in college I bartended at a local tavern hidden in a little strip mall at the far end of town. The owner was a jolly (though liable to be somewhat surly) man who had a passion for craft beers and creative people. His bar was a long dark hallway, with a stage in the front window and a constantly rotating selection of beers on something like twenty taps. In a way, the owner sort of reminds me of Santa if Santa rode a motorcycle, loved beer, and didn’t give two fucks. I once saw him carry a man out of the bar by his throat. Things can get a little rowdy in a college town.
A Norwegian man whose name I have long forgotten used to come and sit at the bar, hands folded on top, looking for someone to share stories with. He was soft-spoken and kind and I liked his presence across from me at the bar. I keep thinking of ships when I think about him, I have a sneaking suspicion he may have built those ships in a bottle, but my memory fails me here in the same way that it won’t permit me to remember his name, though I can picture his face, his hair, his hands. Perhaps his presence was just calm and sturdy despite the storm, a safety zone in a tumultuous sea of increasingly inebriated bodies.
Either way, I think of him every year at Christmas time when I pull out this tiny but miraculously hardy little elf made of string, tissue paper, and little hand-carved wooden clogs. I remember how he explained that it was like a little house elf, that if I was kind and good to it, and remembered to feed it porridge on Christmas Eve, it would reward me with good luck and fortune. However, if I neglected the little elf, it was liable to cause mischief.
The internet tells me the elf is a Nisse, a mythical creature from Norway, who is very shy, loves animals, and lives in the barn on homesteads. The internet also confirms that I should 100 percent be offering him porridge with a healthy pat of butter on top on Christmas Eve if I want to ensure my livestock remains healthy and cared for. In this instance (we live in the suburbs sans pets) does that rule apply to my children? ::Quickly looks up recipe for traditional Norwegian rice porridge::
We will already have a glass full of milk and a plate of cookies for Santa, carrots for his reindeer, and cheese for Santa Mouse, why not throw in some Nissegrot as well?
HOLIDAY COFFEE-TABLE BOOKS
Along with stockings, snowmen, and elves, I have a set of books that I exclusively bring out during the holidays, a few of which are relics from my childhood. Where my sister got the Christmas Village and Santa music box, I lucked out and got some of our most beloved Christmas books. My brother didn’t inherit anything(?!), such is the fate of the eldest…
The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg
One Christmas Eve, our narrator lies in bed worrying about whether Santa Claus is real when suddenly a train appears outside his house ready to take him to the North Pole. When he arrives, he is selected to receive the first gift of Christmas from Santa himself. There is, of course, a bit of a twist, and a whole lot of magic. A true Christmas tradition, this book warms my heart as much as drinking a warm cup of cocoa. I love how it deals with the doubt of Santa's existence and amplifies the magic of believing.
This is potentially a first edition *DM me if you know how to verify this* and worth upwards of $500 BUT to me, it is priceless.
Do not, however, be fooled into watching the movie. It is basically a horror film. For starters, it was released right at the exact moment that CGI was exciting, but not yet mastered, (2004) so everyone looks terrifying with dead fish eyes. It also has Tom Hanks playing nearly every character, including a Tom Waits-ish hobo who is having a fire on the TOP OF THE TRAIN. What? And AND and, it commits the heinous crime of taking a fifteen-minute miracle of a book and stretching it out into one hour and forty minutes of pure torture. Plus, they made it a musical, which was just…extra. In a not-great way.
THE JOLLY CHRISTMAS POSTMAN by Janet & Allan Ahlberg
The Christmas Version of The Jolly Postman or Other People’s Letters, this book has the same format, but with a holiday theme. Follow along as the town postman sets out to deliver the Christmas mail to all the familiar characters from your favorite nursery rhymes. He is often invited inside for a cup of hot cocoa, and as he sips, the reader gets to open the mail and read what each letter says.
I remember pouring over this book as a child, absolutely loving all the tiny details inside each letter, and getting a real laugh out of the puns and jokes. Plus, the added fun of getting to open mail on every page of this book? Genius. It may even inspire your kids to become penpals and get real mail of their own. I’d recommend this book (or it’s non-Christmas counterpart) for every household to own.
SANTA MOUSE by Michael Brown Illustrated by Elfrieda De Witt
A mouse with no name lives all alone in a big house and leaves Santa his best piece of cheese. Santa, endeared by the little mouse, asks him to join him on his rounds. And so the mouse with no name is dubbed Santa Mouse. A sweet and simple little story that shows how the spirit of giving can take many forms. Also, this is how our family’s tradition of putting out cheese for Santa Mouse on Christmas Eve was born.
IF YOU TAKE A MOUSE TO THE MOVIES by Laura Numeroff & Felicia Bond
If you take a mouse to the movies, you will start a chain reaction, a Rube Goldberg machine of events, a game of Mousetrap, if you will (pun intended). Much like any of the other books in this series, the enthusiastic mouse runs his friend ragged with cyclical requests. But, the storyline is cute, the mouse is cute, the festivities are cute, and this version has a jam-packed activity section at the end complete with cookie recipes, crafts, and a modified mousy version of the Twelve Days of Christmas.
KATY AND THE BIG SNOW by Virginia Lee Burton
Katy is a big tractor that has many uses in the town of Geoppolis, but it takes a lot of snow for Katy to be called on to plow. One day, the rain turns to snow, the snow turns to a storm, and one by one the other plows break down until the entire town is at a standstill and needs to be rescued by Katy! I love how this book utilizes a map which is extra fun to study, a compass, and the four major directions as you follow Katy through her plowing adventure as she saves the town.
From the tattered and worn cover and pages, you can tell this was a well-loved book. I can’t wait to pore over the map with my children, just like I remember doing with my big brother, to find where each major landmark in the story is located.
The Best Christmas Hunt Ever by John Speirs
Help find all the lost items and hidden treasures on every page as a family goes on vacation over the Holidays. A classic seek-and-find book, the story is not the point, but the illustrations are fantastic and the hunt for treasures is such fun. A new-to-us book picked up in a Little Free Library, I can tell that this is the year this book will be fun for my 4-year-old, as in years past the puzzle was too difficult for him, and in the future, he will probably have memorized each page - the window for joy is now!
The Mitten by Jan Brett
Nikki wants a snow white mitten, despite Nana’s warnings that it might get lost in the snow. Nikki doesn’t even realize his mitten is missing and goes about his play while increasingly larger and more preposterous animals make Nikki’s lost Mitten into a cozy home. Luckily, Nana’s good knitting holds, despite the mitten’s new residents. Perhaps my favorite part of this book is the pictures that happen along the sidelines, telling their own secret companion story to the one featured on the main page. Great to read at the Holiday season, but also a classic that can sit on your shelf year round.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! by Dr. Seuss
Another Christmas classic, starring the most grumpy Grinch of all, who simply cannot stand the joy, noise, feasting, and singing that occurs during the Who holiday season. The Grinch devises a plan and along with his dog Max, he steals everything festive from the town of Whoville. But, when the Grinch stops to listen to the sounds of the Who’s disappointment he instead hears singing! (“The best way to spread Christmas cheer…") It turns out that taking stuff doesn’t take away the true meaning of the holiday.
Much like The Polar Express, this book has been adapted into films, thankfully only one of which is a nightmare. I hope to never see Jim Carrey in a Grinch costume ever again. The original cartoon adaptation is a straight read of the book, which is my favorite, but the 2018 version by Illumination Studios is a highly recommended adorable, funny, and heartwarming adaptation that has made it into our Christmas film Cannon of Must-Watch Movies during the holiday season.
Aside from tiny, but neglected, decorative elves and our pile of Christmassy books, we have several other holiday traditions that we generally accomplish every year which include:
The movies The Grinch (2018 version) Elf, and a Christmas Eve viewing of It’s a Wonderful Life which will usually induce slumber or occur during last-minute present wrapping.
Baking of holiday cookies, always including my Great-Grandma’s gum-drop cookies and Christmas toffee candy.
Some form of Gingerbread house kit. Life goals: I hope to be brave enough to bake my own from scratch! Any tips out there?
A holiday light viewing. Last year we went to our small-ish town’s light festival, the tree and square lightening in the town just North of us (fake snow to delight us all), and we went with our dear friends to one spectacular house in the Texas hill country lit up bright enough for Santa to see from the North Pole.
What are some of your favorite holiday traditions? Holiday books? Holiday cookie recipes? Holiday movies? Do you love this season or hate it? Are you a Buddy the Elf or are you the Grinch? Do you celebrate a different winter holiday? Share your stories and suggestions, recipes and memories, with me and other readers in the comments below.
Thanks for being here! Merry reading y’all!
Dang those kids and their love of sub-par animated films. Just kidding! It’s probably a lovely film but I’ve got some sort of deep-seated vendetta against (the lovely and adorable) Tom Hanks, so it is my burden to carry alone. 😂
I love how familiar those books looked and how you inherited them, and rightly so! Christmas has always been a special time and especially when I had little ones around. I’m fortunate enough to be living through it again by watching grandchildren grow up. Their excitement is palpable and I enjoy every minute of it. I need to stock up on my collection of Christmas books. I gave all of mine away!! ;-)