Christmas isn't even a religious holiday anymore

i love christmas. but its mostly nostalgic. we had great christmas's as a child. even though my parents had next to nothing, they made them great. i know a lot of people who had terrible xmas's growing up. and i can understand why they don't like them now.

i love the glow of christmas lights, the food, spending time with family, etc etc.

basically i'm lame.

Or normal.

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Elections have consequences.

Christmas lights, Christmas music and the tree are garbage. The rest is great.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

Christmas is the only day of the year where I sleep later than my (now) teenage kids. Oh yes, dad does it on purpose.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

incest

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

It's a state holiday but it is not that difficult to find a relation to religion

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

I'm confident if a person wants to try hard enough, they can "fail" to find even the most obvious things.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

What made Christmas so special for you as a child?

Christmas was always awful for me growing up, but I'd like to make it great for my kids.

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Cookie decorating or gingerbread houses were always good. Don't drag them on lame trips as they get older, only good ones.

Christmas at the TM household:

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Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

The USA 45 hat is much better

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

Don't make them chop down a tree with you unless you can make it fun or if they hate cold weather.

I think the way to make Christmas great for kids is through the creation of tradition rather than reliance on gifts Christmas Day.

There are a few memorable gifts from my youth but generally they are forgotten items. However, the memories of the Christmas Eve extended family parties my parents threw remain vivid; Playing with the Christmas village my dad set up under the tree; My mom literally making tubs of cookies of so many different varieties for us and our whole family; listening to old Christmas records while sitting in a dark house lit only by the tree.

I know I don't live up to the standard my parents set in parenting. I just hope my kids remember the good times and erase the bad things like me losing my temper. We take a trip to a farm to cut down a tree during Thanksgiving weekend. We go to A Christmas Carol. We go to the zoo lights. Christmas Eve mass is downtown at Assumption. All these things are performed annually.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

That's what I get for suggesting taking a wild guess, but thankfully, that was a big swing and a miss.
I wouldn't normally at incest jokes, but that was pretty funny.

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Just chillin' like Garret Quillin.

Create individual recurring memories that they will have the rest of their lives.

I always got to open one gift on Christmas Eve. It seems like something small but that kind of happy memory along with it being a tradition that happened every year did well.
Get that one really cool gift for Christmas morning too. I'm off the opinion that you can't spoil your kids with one great gift every Christmas.
Have the kid(s) put out cookies and milk for Santa the night before. Another tradition. Make a big deal about putting up the tree.
Get a high quality moving train set for under the tree.
Given where you live now, take them to NYC in December when they are old enough. Take them to the Radio City Christmas Spectacular.

Basically, spend time with your kid(s), and make traditions that they can remember their whole lives.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

there are a number of things that stand out that we try and do with our children.

we began decorations after thanksgiving. decorating the tree was a big deal for us.

we would then create a countdown calendar on a big piece of posterboard. and every saturday leading up to christmas we'd have a special thing we'd do and it would be in a little envelope that we couldn't look at until that day. drive around and look at christmas lights, go to the mall and look at stuff, etc etc.

as i mentioned my parents weren't loaded. my dad was a minister and my mother a stay at home mom. my dad would always tell us it was going to be a bleak christmas present wise and we were always blown away at the amount of gifts we got. (my mom is a deal hound. she found the receipts in a folder from one christmas were she had purchased like 400 dollars worth of GI Joe stuff on clearance the January before for like 60 dollars. and just hid it from us for 11 months somehow.

my mother loved the warm glow of mini christmas lights so they were everywhere. still to this day, i love walking into a room only lit with that light.

Christmas day we would visit some older people from church who were shut in and bring them cookies, and then we'd go down to the river and feed ducks.

there are probably more but we try and do a lot of those same things with our kids. apparently feeding the ducks at the river is illegal now (some stupid hippy twat complained that its bad for the geese and ducks, they don't migrate naturally because people feed them...nobody enforces it) but we don't care.

so my oldest figured out santa at an early age. and that trickled down. none of our children believed in santa. Which natually they have accidentally ruined for other children but oh well. anyhoo. at first i was disappointed. but then i found a new way to have fun with it. Convincing the children that I did believe and trying to get them to as well. ski tracks in the yard. i got on the roof stomped around, and jingled bells and ran down the ladder, ran intot he house up the stairs and into the room "DID YOU GUYS HEAR THAT!!" i began to sway them. it was an absolute blast. i'd buy myself a present and label it from santa and be like, "well santa only brings presents to people who believe in him"

i convinced my middle child for a new york minute when she was at panera with her mother and grandmother and standing in line behind them was a midget. my wife said she kept staring at him and she apologized and the guy was very nice and said hello to the girl and stuff. My wife tells me this when i get home from work and i go home and go "mom tells me you met one of santas elves at panera" her eyes get big and i can tell she's buying it. that night she goes "if i believe in santa will i get an extra gift"....well thats how it works....she was like "i'll think about it" but was swayed back to the darkside by her older sister.

i also have great memories of christmas growing up, and even into adulthood, that makes it my favorite holiday (season).

for as much as i love it, though, it's got to go away once january 2nd hits. seeing all the lights and still hearing christmas music after the new year is worse than the worst bender hangover.

All aspects of Christmas within my 4 walls, my wife, my kids, and my step-kids is great. I like the decorations and some Christmas vinyl.

Like all other holidays, my extended family ruins a big chunk of it. It we could simply gather for a meal and drinks and leave it at that it would be fine, but it's always 20 million gatherings and a whole shit ton of drama.

I'm with Spaulding.

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the worst part is having to speak to my father in law over the phone. awkward!!

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

This. My dad was rarely around, but every single year, the entire family decorated the Christmas tree. It's my one lasting memory of childhood Christmases. We were all together, fussing over the ornaments, with a fire in the fireplace and Christmas music playing.

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"Having to"?

Beta-Alert!

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I don't even get to join in and I like it.


Nomination rejected.

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This, both of you guys. I need to do this. We are together and do Christmas things but something special that becomes and annual thing. I would like that. Start a new one. I will actually speak to them and brainstorm something.

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Elections have consequences.

My sons believed in Santa until they were 8 & 5 respectively. I couldn't believe it, but the wife wouldn't allow me to openly laugh, so I'd get amused by things like showing them the NASA tracking of "Santa" and making them wound up and nervous. I'd be embarrassed about that, except for the fact they laugh about it now. Thankfully the wife also made sure everything was wrapped so while I groused my ass off wrapping toys Xmas Eve night, they both now have an affinity for the season and love memories of tearing through everything in sight and still finding new stuff later. The years they both got more into video games, we kind of lost some of the luster, but even I still enjoy the season a lot.

Looking back on it, my youngest completely shook off the notion of Santa before his older brother. I guess my oldest had it too good for too long to tempt fate, much. Even now, his Twitter banner is a picture at Xmas dinner of he & his little brother. Oddly, its the youngest that's been most into Christmas trees, lights, food etc.. We all enjoy it in different ways...I think.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

If the kids are close enough in age, once the older one knows it's usually over for the younger one.

My business partner is two years younger than his brother and he likes to tell the story of how he knew there was no Santa first. Their older cousin was playing Santa for them and my partner said, "Hey, Santa has the same British Knights as Sean does!"

One of my good friends has an older sister who is just a no bullshit person. She's a statistician by trade and I'm pretty sure her daughter never believed in Santa Claus. She just wouldn't tell her kid that something phony was real. When my friend's son was at that age when kids start questioning, he and a girl friend from school were planning to set a trap to catch Santa to see if he was real. His aunt said, "Why do you need to go through all that trouble? You can just ask me." So the kid hesitated for a minute and said, "Okay, Auntie, is Santa real?" And she told him no. My friend was super pissed. The kid looked like he was about to cry, but then they told him that he was in on a big secret that he could never tell younger kids so he felt like a big guy and got all puffy chested.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

The day for presents were great but it's all the other things about Christmas where you spent time with your parents and brothers (or sisters if you had them).

Going into the crawlspace to get the decorations and tree because your parents wanted nothing to do with crawling around.

Going to the tree farm to find a real tree to cut down (maybe skip the chainsaw and use a handsaw)

We eventually switched to a fake tree which allowed our family to decorate the tree pretty extravagantly. The mixture of silly child ornaments and expensive ones my mother enjoyed collecting.

The building of a Christmas village under the tree.

Baking chocolate chip cookies for Santa. Once we grew older it was still fun to bake the cookies for the holidays.

Going to "downtown" Arlington Hts and playing at their park with Christmas decorations. Sitting on a old stranger's lap in a Santa costume.

Receiving those German chocolate calendars where you open one door for each day of December to reveal a chocolate.

Just simple things like above where you spend time with your loved ones. MANY of the above are mundane but I remember them moreso than 90% of the gifts I received as a child.

And she puzzled and puzzed, till her puzzler was sore.
Then Spaulding thought of something she hadn't before!
Maybe Christmas, she thought, doesn't come from a store.
Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more.

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