Christmas Questions

I totally stole this because I'm un-creative.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Depends on the gift. Some are easy to wrap, others are a pain. I wrap most things though – and if there are more than one I might put them in a bag!

2. Real tree or artificial? Fake. Pre-lit. We’re lazy.

3. When do you put up the tree? Pre-cat we’d have it up the day after Thanksgiving. Now that we have four naughty kitties who like climbing it, we put it up for one day each year for our party. We lock the cats up in the morning, clean the house, put up and decorate the tree. We then take it down that evening before we let the cats back out. I even forgot to take a picture this year. Boo.

4. When do you take the tree down? See #3

5. Do you like eggnog? Yes, I do. Unfortunately it really doesn’t like me too much so I try to resist it.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? Christmas was always kind of crazy since both my parents worked at churches. I don’t remember specific gifts as much as I remember waiting up with my brother and sister to see Santa (FAIL – totally fell asleep), and all the unique things my mom did later on (we even celebrated Hanukkah one year.)

7. Do you have a nativity scene? No – although there’s kind of a partial one in a musical snow globe we got as a gift a few years ago (from my dad & Cheryl, I think.)

8. Hardest person to buy for? We don’t really do big gift exchanges in our families. I usually end up giving gift cards. Shipping is expensive!

9. Easiest person to buy for? See #8.

10. Worst Christmas gift ever received? I think I’m pretty easy to shop for – you can’t go wrong with kitchen stuff or books – so I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten something completely horrible. For the longest time my sister and I would get the exact same thing in different colors from my aunt. I was blue, Catherine was purple. That always bugged me…

11. Mail or e-mail Christmas card? Mail. Just dropped them on Monday.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? The Muppet’s Christmas Carol.

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? I usually start thinking about it Thanksgiving weekend. Doing most of it online helps aid my chronic procrastination.

14. Have you ever regifted a Christmas present? Sure. If I can’t use it (or don’t want it) why keep it around?

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Cookies! I’ve been indulging way too much at work lately…

16. Clear lights or colored on the tree? Clear. The ornaments provide all the color needed.

17. Favorite Christmas song? Definitely NOT that stupid John Lennon “Happy Christmas” song with the stupid kids choir comprised of children who can’t sing. But that’s not what was asked, is it? My favorite is probably some incarnation of “O Holy Night.” I’ve heard a few this year (Carrie Underwood, Josh Groban, David Archuleta) and both my dad and I noted that they seem to have trouble singing more than one verse – they just repeat the first one twice. Hmmm.

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? We don’t have very far to go to get to Adam’s parents’ house or my dad and Cheryl’s so we try to stop in to each of them at some point. We can’t go too far during the holidays since bells play Christmas Eve and I get very busy at work toward the end of the year.

19. Can you name Santa’s reindeer? There was a “Dear Abby” about this a few days ago! Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, DonDER, Blitzen, Rudolph. And Olive (as in Olive the other reindeer. Bwahahahaha. Seriously though, there’s a song about Olive – we (my mom, my sister, and I) used to sing it when we did programs at nursing homes along with another favorite – Christmas on the Isthmus of Panama, now with tap dancing!) Wow. Tangent. Sorry about that.

20. Do you have an angel on top or a star? For the 6 hours it was up, we had a star.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? No real rule set in stone. Last year we opened them right after our party since they were all under our tree and, well, we had to take the tree down so what the heck. Not sure what this year will bring.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of year? Traffic by the mall (+ crappy weather.) Luckily I don’t have to go that way very often, but seriously people. Pay attention to where you’re driving and get in the correct lane more than .00001 seconds before you need to turn. Gah.

23. Ugliest Christmas Decoration ever invented? There are a lot of ugly decorations. I’m not one for gaudy ribbon and bows…

25. Which looks best – theme trees or homey trees? Uhm. Theme trees like a tree all about cats? That would be cool. Ours would probably fall into the homey category – it’s a hodge-podge of the ornaments we’ve collected over the past 5 years. Seems like that takes less effort and brain-power than try to coordinate everything. I’m all for easy. See #2.

26. Gingerbread or sugar cookies? Sugar. I don’t like Gingerbread at all. Usually is too dry and I’m not a fan of the spice combination.

27. Do you like Fruitcake? I don’t know that I’ve ever had it, but I don’t think it would be on my list of favorites. I don’t like nuts or gummy fruit and it sounds kind of dense and heavy.