Free Associating on Christmas

--I will always cry when I hear “Feed the World” by Band-Aid on the radio. I don’t know why, I just do.

--I hate to write Christmas gift wish lists. It makes me uncomfortable. It makes me feel like a demanding bitch. Don’t ask me what I want. Surprise me. Or don’t. It’s all good.

--There’s nothing I want for Christmas. I have everything I could possibly need or possibly want. I love my life, my husband, my home and my dogs. What more could a girl need? (Well, I do need that awful orange paint to disappear from the guest bedroom, and that tacky mirror mosaic swirly pattern on the wall to vaporize…. OK, that’s my list.)

--I don’t really like Christmas music that much, with the exception of “Feed the World,” and last year I was digging on that a capella song by Straight No Chaser. However, that stupid “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time” by Paul McCartney makes my teeth itch. How is it that the man who wrote many of the songs for The Beatles wrote this piece of crap? And more importantly, why is it still played every other minute of every day from Thanksgiving through Christmas? I once read somewhere that the guy who owns Clear Channel banned certain songs from being played on his stations. Why can’t this song be on his list?

--When I was a kid, we celebrated Christmas Eve with my Mom’s side of the family. I grew up with this tight network of aunts, uncles and cousins. It was like “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” but only with a bunch of Pollacks. Every year my cousins and I had to sing for our presents, per my Aunt Halina’s request. We always sang “Silent Night” and a Polish carol, the title of which roughly translates to “Today in Bethlehem.” And every year when we’d sing the Polish one, all of us cousins would start out strong in the first few lines or so. Then one by one the voices would drop out until the few cousins who knew all the words were left singing, and the rest of us were just mouthing along. To this day, I still do not know all the words to “Today in Bethlehem,” but I think my brother Kaz does. And I know a few of my cousins do.

--My nieces and nephews are getting older, and harder to buy for. It used to be that I could roll into “Discovery Kids” and come up with some very cool yet educational gifts for $20-25 a piece. With 12 nieces and nephews, that adds up fast. But now they are teens and pre-teens, and it’s harder to come up with cool gifts without draining the bank account.

--It’s a good thing that Todd won all that money at the casino last week. Our nieces and nephews will likely have a better Christmas this year.

--I love getting that “Feliz Navidad” song stuck in Todd’s head. His brain is like fly paper and it catches all the annoying songs that fly by. It’s fun to catch him absently whistling “Feliz Navidad” moments after hearing it on the radio.

--Because we are dog dorks, we tend to work the word “beagle” when we’re goofing around and listening to the radio. Just last week I sang “The beagle-y dog” instead of “Feliz Navidad.” It totally worked. Try it.

And now it’s stuck in your head too, isn’t it?

My work is done.

Happy Holidays.