LOVES // things do to for christmas

Traditions are great. Really, they are. Our family has the really odd one of having paella every year (not sure how that got started).

And let's not pretend that we all don't get up just a bit earlier on Christmas day. Come on, admit it, your brain hasn't recovered from being seven years old and super-pumped for Santa. (My own story of losing belief in the Tooth Fairy, Santa, the Easter Bunny, etc, is actually kind of a strange one. It's at the bottom of this post.)

So in the hour or so before normal humans awake, what do you do?
Grab your laptop, of course, because I have a couple things you absolutely MUST do.

One, read about Krampus.
If you aren't good this year, Santa's buddy Krampus will tie you up in a sack and eat you.
I was raised with books about evil fairies, and Norwegian trolls who ate children, and the original Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson stories where most of the characters end up brutally murdered, and two parents who actively encouraged me that there were several ghosts in our house. Krampus just comes naturally to me.

Two, watch A Nightmare Before Christmas.
It's like a Christmas movie AND a Halloween movie, and the main characters are all dead. It's fantastic. As a child I watched it year-round (and let's not forget about similar Tim Burton masterpiece Corpse Bride).
Seriously it's a fantastic movie. I want to live in Halloweentown and Christmastown at the same time, but mostly I'm just curious about the sketchy circle of trees.

Three, Christmas dubstep.
Do I really need to say anything else?
No I don't.
So here's some of my favorites.
Carol of the Bells — favorite song ever to begin with... and then there was BASS.
Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy — some ballet company SOMEWHERE has to dance to this.
Jingle Bells — but of course.
So now your Christmas has either been stripped of childhood joy, or made a whole lot awesomer.

Four, yes, go watch some Glee.
Go on, we all know that Glee is like Christmas crack.
It's so cute... my brain is melting. And their love triangles/squares/pentagons/hexagons/heptagons/etc are hilarious. And then there's that one Irish guy with the fantastic accent! I love Irish accents.

Oh, right, the non-believer story.
Well when I was newly seven and at the peak of my tooth-losing, I was looking for something in my parents' dresser. Instead, I found a tin of teeth. My teeth.
My seven-year-old mind immediately jumped to OH MY GOD MY MOTHER KILLED THE TOOTH FAIRY.
This is the kind of child I was.
I then proceeded to search the house — which was a former WWII army barrack, as at that time we were living with my grandmother on Great Diamond Island — for the Tooth Fairy's tiny corpse.
I didn't find it, so then I was like ooohhhhhh. no real Tooth Fairy. gottttt it.
But I still don't think my mother's forgiven me for pegging her a murder.


❦ Merry Christmas! ❦