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[Patrick]

I mean Turkey Day's cool or whatever but fuck that, tell me what you want for Christmas 'cause I'd like some ideas on things to give/ask for.

[mtmerrick]

[pwhodges]

I mean Turkey Day's cool or whatever

Of course, Christmas is our Turkey Day over here.

[LookingIn]

Having three retailers in my family you start thinking about Christams just before Labor Day. No, really. That's when they start shopping.
One big thing they taught early and often is when in doubt, ask for and give cash. Let the person buy their own gift, that way they can choose what they actually like.

[Metope]

Christmas this year will be great! My family (three siblings, my mom, my aunt and her two kids, my grandma) will be together for Christmas dinner, and I'll see my dad and his side of the family as well, plus all of my friends I haven't seen since summer. I always love Christmas, but it's especially great these days since I'm studying abroad, chances too see my entire family are not that many.

Oh and May will be there, I am excited about seeing May again!

Edit: I am actually really excited about Thanksgiving too though. I'll be with my Murkan boyfriend and his family this year, so I will actually get to celebrate it! I've never had Thanksgiving before so it'll be pretty cool.

[Barmymoo]

I am also excited, but now a little nervous. That is a lot of family!

I uh there's not a lot of point me writing about my Christmas because Metope just did it for me

[Metope]

Haha sorry. It's not that much family, just a little bit! There is way more family in my family than that. I'm sure you'll meet all of them


Plus if we have a big extended family dinner at some point you'll get to meet a couple babies. My cousins have started having kids, so there are four generations of family now. Now that is a lot of family.

[Welu]

I'm usually good about getting at least a few gifts early but hasn't happened this year. I work in a shop so I'll be working over Christmas but I always fight to get Boxing Day off. Don't have my brothers home at the same time often. Plus last year and this year my partner and his family are coming over that day.

[Barmymoo]

BABIES.

[Welu]

Christ, May, I thought you were saying that to me. 

[Barmymoo]

IT WAS AN ORDER. GET ON IT. 

[Zebediah]

This Christmas I might actually get to meet my niece's kids. They've been living in Colorado while I've been living in Massachusetts, but it's possible we'll all be in North Carolina at the same time.

[jwhouk]

And if you're quick about it, Welu, May might give you a discount on midwifery services...

[Welu]

I will have a reasonable number of babies and in my case that reasonable number is none. 

[LeeC]

I already put up decorations...

[Welu]

I never took down the lights I put around the front door last year. I'll be taking them down to move and then putting them up in the new house where they'll probably live around that front door.

[Lines]

I don't even think about Christmas until Thanksgiving is over. Two years in a craft store was enough to make me hate thinking about it before then. Damned glitter and fake pine and cinnamon scented everything.

Also I am cooking Thanksgiving dinner mostly by myself for the first time! (My mom is going to help, of course, but I'm going to do the actual cooking.) I am excited! We're actually going to plan out our menu this weekend, so I can start buying up ingredients before they disappear from the store.

[Kugai]

Got invited to a BBQ on Christmas Day, so looking forward to that.  Otherwise, I have very few family and they're too far away to be able to get together.

[BrusselSprouts]

We are celebrating Christmas early this year chez moi. My brother is coming to visit from Toronto and he couldn't get Christmas day off so we'll be celebrating on the 5th this year. I plan on purchasing 90% of the presents on Amazon

[Loki]

I AM NOT PREPARED

Seriously, no idea where I will be spending Christmas. After Christmas, I *might* be at the 30C3.

No presents yet either. I should at least make a list of who gets something this year.

[GarandMarine]

I think I'm gonna follow Lee's example. Hawaii 'Xmas

[Carl-E]

I'd invite y'all over , but, y'know, ....

I DON'T KNOW ANY OF YOU PEOPLE!!


Anyway, we usually have a party christmas eve.  It started because out church has two services christmas eve - a family service (with a lot of music) at 5 PM and a fairly somber "midnight mass" (at 11 PM).  We're fairly close to the church, so we opened our house to the choir, the pastor, the deacon, the ushers, and anyone else who wanted to do both services but lived kind of far away.  It's always been a good time with good friends, and was nice in that it was a circumscribed time period and also potluck. 

This year, with the church almost falling apart, they've decided to make it more like an open house at the parish hall, food and fun for all between the services.  So no party at my house this year.  I've been asked to do several things at the open house, including reading "The Night Before Christmas" to the little ones, but I don't need to play host. 

And I'm OK with that.  It will be a bit sad, and who knows what next year will bring.  Things change.  And of course, I'll still be decorating like a madman... for us.  Only for us. 

Edit: what the fuck is a "deacoon"? 

[Blue Kitty]

My work place started playing Christmas music the day after Halloween and I died a little inside. Thankfully they stopped the next day

[Patrick]

the last time I gave anyone an Xmas gift aside from my bandmates was a few years ago when the forum had a Secret Santa (back when Yelley regularly posted here; she and her husband helped me shop!) and Kris was my target and my god damn package never made it to her.

it had a t-shirt from In-N-Out Burger and a Darth Vader mask, I am still rather annoyed it never made it to you Kris :C if it's any consolation, I never got mine from Shane either because the goddamn Italian post misplaced my package when the whole goddamn country went on strike and they lost half of the US's diplomatic pouch mail en route to Albania that Xmas season. fuck that year it sucked.

[Welu]

It sucks your stuff didn't make it but a forum secret Santa sounds cool.

[Is it cold in here?]

A donation to a cause the recipient cares about has the advantage that it's always the right size and doesn't take up space.

[Patrick]

It sucks your stuff didn't make it but a forum secret Santa sounds cool.

either we haven't done it or I've ignored it for a few years. but when it worked, it was awesome. I was just cursed that year I guess. -____-

[Lines]

We haven't done it in a long time. Not because stuff kept getting lost, but because a lot of people just wouldn't send anything.

[GarandMarine]

Well that's a big pile of not cool.

[Lines]

Yeah... Especially around Christmas time. It got depressing that people just weren't receiving anything.

If you guys want to do a swap, I'm totally game! We could do something small, like a $10 spending limit (not including shipping). It's easier on wallets, people can make/find send random little silly things that cost nothing, and it'd be fun to laugh about. OR even a white elephant gift exchange where you send something you don't want that's lying around your house because then you just pay shipping and it can be something small and utterly strange.

[GarandMarine]

I'd be in.

[de_la_Nae]

I dunno, I'm not good at holidays. The family started falling apart years ago, and now most of the immediate ones I give a damn about are dead or something resembling it.

That's a little unfair and negative to the ones that are still around, but they have their own families to take care of and be with.

I guess I should start trying to develop better holiday habits and stuff. Find friends who are also stranded/alone and do stuff with them. I just haven't been looking that far ahead I think.

[GarandMarine]

Well Nae you can come to my place for Thanksgiving if you want. Actual. Make that an open invitation to Mid-West/East Coast QCers. Turkey at GM's place bitches. Someone better bring cranberry sauce.

[mtmerrick]

i love everything about cranberries except cranberry sauce/relish. either of those makes me gag.

stuffing is the most important part.

i'd love to come GM. it'd be a logistical impossibility, but i'd love to come.

thanksgiving is going to be Family Drama: The Movie, featuring nonstop fighting and epic fights that promises to have crazy women punch old ladies in the face! (all while screaming at you ._.)

christmas looks like it'll be shaping up to be thanksgiving lite...

[Thrillho]

I start Christmas from 24th November to give me a month of Christmas music as a lead-in.

[Barmymoo]

I'm hoping to get my mum to bring my tiny Christmas tree across at some point soon or alternatively I'll go over to hers and get it - and put it up on December 1st. If I stuck to not decorating until Christmas Eve and taking everything down on Twelfth Night I'd only have any decorations up at all for two days, since I'm away Dec 20th - Jan 5th! My friend pointed out that I could consolidate the rubbish on two shelves of my bookcase and put my nativity scene there, the Christmas tree will have to go on top of the bookshelf or possibly on the table, and that's all I have space for.

[Welu]

Partner's parents gave us a tiny fibreoptic light tree, only about a foot tall, last year. I put it on a desk near the window so from the outside it looks like a full sized tree.

[Grognard]

My wife started the Christmas music on 1 Nov.
urgh.
I like holiday music for the week prior and until 2 Jan.
much more of it brings out my !HUMBUG!
and this year's Christmas is necessarily CHEAP, what with the MRS taking a 40% paycut.

as for a forum Secret Santa: I could do that.

[Patrick]

I went up to Oakland for my drummer's fiancee's birthday party this week, and my singer's car radio shat out and turned itself off, so he and I just started singing demented versions of Xmas carols. it was awesome.

TIS THE SEASON TO BE NAUGHTY, FALALALALAAAAAAAA LA LA LA LA
SET YOUR BROTHER'S PANTS ON FIRE, FALALALALAAAAAA LA LA LA LA
THROW YOUR SISTER IN THE DRYER, FALALA, LALALA, LA LA LA
BREAK SHIT TO YOUR HEART'S DESIRE, FALALALALAAAAA LA LA LA LA

[pwhodges]

If I stuck to not decorating until Christmas Eve and taking everything down on Twelfth Night

How delightfully traditional (as in: correct).  A lost cause though; a few years ago, even, I saw a full-size Christmas tree put out for rubbish on Christmas Eve.

[Barmymoo]

It's how we always did things when I was a child, and I prefer that approach, but it's not practical when you almost never spend Christmas at home!

[jwhouk]

Get one of these:

[Welu]

We always put up the decorations on December 17th because that's my brother's birthday. The decoration come down whenever, usually around January 7th.

[GarandMarine]

A fun way to do christmas trees: Purchase a young live fir or pine tree. (and a shovel, possibly a trenching spade) enjoy the tree in your home for the holidays, water it, give it good fertilizer the usual, then go inna woods and plant that tree for New Year's.

[LookingIn]

We always put up the decorations on December 17th because that's my brother's birthday. The decoration come down whenever, usually around January 7th.

I used to demand that my family do that on that same day(coincidentally, it's my birthday ), the last few years they prefer to shut the kids up by putting the tree up the Wednesday before Thanksgiving...

[Zebediah]

It used to be family tradition to go out Christmas Eve morning to buy the tree - my dad liked to hit the tree vendors as they were packing up to leave town;  he got a better price that way. This came back to bite him in the ass one year when I was about 12, when all of the tree lots were already sold out and closed by Christmas Eve. We wound up cutting down an old pine tree in our back yard for our tree that year. After that he always got the tree by the 22nd, but left it outside sitting in a bucket of water until the 24th. Then we'd bring it in the house, my dad and I would do the lights (he didn't trust my sisters with electrical stuff, sexist pig that he was) and then we all put the ornaments on. Meanwhile my mom would be in the kitchen baking cookies the whole time.

[Welu]

We always put up the decorations on December 17th because that's my brother's birthday. The decoration come down whenever, usually around January 7th.

I used to demand that my family do that on that same day(coincidentally, it's my birthday ), the last few years they prefer to shut the kids up by putting the tree up the Wednesday before Thanksgiving...

Matching birthdays! Neat! Fortunately there are no younglings any more in our house so Christmas is to the whims of happy drunky adults.

We have two fake trees. Mammy bought a second better one a couple years ago to replace the living room tree to be a pretty elegant tree with blue and silver decorations. Then there's a second tree that goes in the dining area using the old sentimental red, gold and green tacky old-fashioned decorations and I refused to let them and the tree be thrown out. So Mammy agreed to keep both as long as I decorated the tacky tree. That's never happened. She always does the tacky tree, I do the elegant tree.

[Lines]

I love putting ornaments on the tree SO much. It lets my OCD about balance run free and I also get to show off our quirky ornaments. Although we really should find a shorter tree, as ours grazes the top of our ceiling, so we can't use a star or whatever on top. We don't really do elegant, we do quirky colorful stuff.

Here's last year's tree! (With the cat proof ornaments on the bottom!)

[valley_parade]

From the pictures I saw last year, my girlfriend's aunt's place in Syracuse seems like an xmas wonderland.

When I today told my boss I was planning on going up there for a few days, fresh off of "I'm trying to schedule everyone for Thanksgiving, what are your plans? *schedules Shane so he can't be at either family dinner*", he pretty much told me to go fuck myself if I thought I was getting any time off to go away.

As usual, xmas gets me the most down because I feel like I have to keep up with the Lexus buying Joneses in every fucking TV commercial and I can't even afford the big ribbon on the goddamned car. I just, meh. I've never had great xmas memories, and this year seemed like I might get a nice one for once, but no. If I have to work on xmas, I might end up lighting the entire gas station on fire.

However, the Ventures' xmas album is fucking ace and still the best vinyl purchase I've ever made.

The Lady has told me she bought me the worlds' craziest, most awesome gift, but won't hint at what it is. She's also shown my roommate, whose said I better like it, or else he's taking it. On the flipside, since dating me begat her becoming a Red Sox fan, part of my gift for her is a Baseball Fan Starter kit with a bunch of DVDs and other fun stuff. Also a t-shirt of her favorite player (Mike Napoli), if he signs a new contract before xmas.

[Grognard]

I hate the commercialized Christmas, too.

give me an old country Christmas with handmade presents with plenty of good food.