What Makes It Feel Like Christmas?

You'll be doin' all right, with your Christmas of white
But I'll have a blue, blue blue blue Christmas!

I'm not sure where I come down on the epic question of holiday aesthetics. Which is more sublime, more wondrous? The Elvis version or the Porky Pig version? I guess you could say . . . I am of two minds about it!

The inestimable Mrs. L asked in Family Home Evening before December started, "What makes it feel like Christmas?" She wanted us to participate in making it feel more like the holiday, so the Spirit could surround us. The answers were enlightening.

Singing Christmas songs! Which we've been doing every night after reading a loop from Mrs. L's Christmas advent paper chain.

Going caroling! Which we are going to go do as soon as number one daughter gets home from BYU.

Making Cookies, decorating the tree. Snowy weather was one suggestion, but not one I have any control over. Putting up our outside lights. One thing that makes it feel like Christmas is the crush of events, concerts, and school functions that swamps our calendar, which while tiring, is very, very rewarding.

One thing I love is hearing Christmas songs. The sappy holiday favorites. Bing Crosby's "White Christmas". Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Coming to Town". The radio station that signal's a surrender to middle age, Lite-FM 101.9 , switches its programming to all holiday favorites after Thanksgiving. And I love it.

Well, in small doses anyway. I realized after hearing George Michael sing "Last Christmas" for the third time in one day that 101.9 only has about three or four hours of Christmas Songs, so the likelihood of repeats is depressingly high. So it doesn't take too long before I start to switch away from the station when one of the sappier repeats rolls by.

But not so for The Royal Guardsmen's "Snoopy Versus the Red Baron". I could listen to that on a loop for at least two or three days. Add Thurl Ravenscroft's excellent baritone singing about bad bananas and arsenic sauce in "You're a Mean One, Mister Grinch", that is holidays, baby! What can I say? I love cartoons.

Though I have noticed a distinct and disheartening lack of The Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping" on that station. Maybe it's just a little too alternative? Never fear, the internets holds everything in its infinite grasp, you can listen to it here!

But the thing that makes it feel the most like holidays? My family. I love having them around. Seeing them, talking to them, playing with them.

ahem


Kissing them!

Make the holidays happy!