(waiting for fog to lift so I can run out to buy the 10 million* paper lunch sacks I will need for my little plants' roots and shoots so they can go in the drying oven)

(*An exaggeration, but it always feels like that to me at the start of a project that promises to be long and messy).

Some folks have been writing about not feeling a whole lot of Christmas cheer this year (BigAlice is one). And you know, I bounce back and forth. I'm not as cheery and Christmassy and everything as I usually am. I don't quite know why. I don't think it's like Frog-o-phobic, where I'm being overwhelmed and sad by the commercialized nature of modern American Christmases - it's never gotten to me before (I'm pretty good at tuning out the ads) and frankly, this year, I've been so busy I've not had time to see enough television to go all sneery at Lexus' insinuation that if you REALLY loved that person in your life, you'd buy them a car that costs more than what I paid for my house.

And also, I do have a little list of some "nice little items" I gave to my parents for Christmas. Because it's been an expensive fall (new hot water heater, plumbing repair, car repairs...), I haven't bought some of the things I might normally buy (heck, I need new jeans, even - I've blown out the thighs on one pair. And I hate that. That's one of the things I hate about being zaftig - the first place slacks show wear is in the thigh region. I suspect other women-of-size will have noticed that, too). So it's not a sense of "there's nothing I need, so there's no sense in asking for gifts." And I've been too busy to do "fun" shopping, also.

Actually, I think that's it - I've been so BUSY. I've not done some of the usual "Christmas" things I do - didn't bake the fruitcake, haven't done my cards, haven't had time to finish projects so as to clear the deck for new projects I want to start over break, haven't even really thoroughly cleaned house, haven't taken enough time to listen to Christmas music.

And I think I need to remedy a couple of those things to start feeling more like it's Christmas (because there's nothing I hate worse than having a big holiday pass, and my going, "But I didn't take time to ENJOY it!")

So I've decided - even though I said I'd wait and do them when I was up at my parents' house - that I'm going to go out (after harvesting my 10 million* little plants today) and find some kind of nice Christmas cards, and do them this weekend, and send them out. And listen to Christmas music while I do it.

(*again, an exaggeration. What with not-germination and all, I think it's closer to 180)

And I'm going to clean house this afternoon (And listen to music while I do it, I think).

Because there's something nice about sitting in a clean quiet house of an evening, and being able to relax because the kitchen floor has been scrubbed and all the odds and ends of makeup on the bathroom counter have been put away (I have but one bathroom so I like to try to keep it pretty spotless in case someone comes over. I don't have the luxury of having a "powder room" I can keep nice and a "behind the scenes bathroom" where I can leave my stockings drying over the shower curtain rod and stuff like that).

And the music is a big part of it, too. Christmas music is very important to me. My Christmas music tends to fall into two camps - sacred music that is mostly British choral renditions of things (and maybe I'm prejudiced given that my heritage is part-Brit, but I think the British have the world beat in traditional choral music. Or at least they have other English-speaking countries beat) and secular music from (mainly) the 40s and 50s.

The secular music is the kind of stuff I'd play at a party - some of it is crooner-era stuff (e.g., Dean Martin doing "Winter Wonderland") which is kind of fun and cool and slick and makes you feel like a sophisticated grown-up. (My all time favorite of these "cool" renditions though? Bing Crosby and the Mills Brothers doing "Jingle Bells." It's so much FUN. It sounds like they're goofing with each other, just having a lot of fun making the recording. And yes, the band is fairly hot [in the old jazz sense of hot] - as I think Bing comments at one point - on that one).

I also have some of the more "serious" pop stuff - singers like Bing Crosby doing Silent Night - more reverent songs, but not what I'd strictly consider "sacred" music because it was produced for a pop audience (I think I wrote earlier about "A Sentimental Christmas" which is one of my favorite compilation albums).

I also love the original version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (not the ORIGINAL original - which is actually kind of depressing - but the one known as the Judy Garland versionv-the one with the line about "muddle through somehow" - not the cheered-up version that (I think) Sinatra originally did). I like the song in that form because it recognizes that Christmases aren't always PERFECT, that there are times you do kind of muddle through (like the year that Sam, the beloved cat my family had when I was growing up, died shortly after Christmas. And the Christmas of 2004, which was just one long festival of difficult-to-digest news). And yet - at least in the version of the song that Garland insisted upon - there's a sense of hope, that maybe next year things will be better, that maybe someday soon the people we love will be close to us again.

But what really makes me feel most reminiscent of Christmases past - and most Christmassy - is the sacred music. Particularly, as I said, British choral music. I tend to prefer my carols more straightforward (incidentally, I think one of the reasons I like the 1940s/50s versions of things, and not the modern pop versions so much, is that the modern pop versions I've heard tend to be so "sweetened" and heavily produced and orchestrated that the basic simplicity of the carol is covered up by swoopy strings and the vocal calisthenics of the singer).

I also think - and this may be my family background, or perhaps it's that odd mystical "genetic memory" I sometimes talk about - the whole British idea of Christmas (or at least my imagining of such) puts me in the Christmas spirit.

I love a lot of the traditional foods (yes, even the much-maligned heavy Christmas cake). I love the idea of bringing in holly to put behind the picture frames (I have a holly tree, and yet I never get around to doing that). I love the idea of playing games and telling ghost stories (and yes, even the adults - especially the adults - participating. I think one of the greatest ideas about Christmas is that adults have an opportunity to become a bit childlike again. It is nice to take a little rest from being an adult sometimes). And I love the music.

Part of it, is, it is just so grand. I've described myself before as being remarkably "High Church" in my sentiments for someone who belongs to a denomination that's basically an offshoot of one of the "Dissenter" groups (which did not like the COE because of its pomp). But, you know? I like pomp. I like the idea of making things grand and formal and maybe even a tiny bit solemn. (Yes, it is possible to be formal/solemn and yet joyful at the same time). I'd not mind it one bit if they used incense in the church at the Christmas eve service.

I also enjoy - and try to find and attend - the "service of lessons and carols" that some churches do (in the British tradition) at Christmastime (it can be difficult; most places do them as a Christmas eve service. Some years I've resorted to watching a version of it on television). I LIKE that. I like the structure of it; the fact that it doesn't change much from year to year.

I also like, about the British choral tradition, that they will sing the words of one carol or hymn to the tune of another. On one of the albums I have, there is a rendition of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" that rather than being sung to the familiar tune (at least the tune that's familiarly used in America), it's sung to a tune that either is, or is very reminiscent of, the tune I associate with "While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night."

(I do not have a terrifically good music education. I kind of figured out on my own, one day, what the metrical markings in the hymnbook meant, and then had the flash of realization that you could sing the words of one hymn to the tune of another, as long as the meters were the same. Another, more fanciful example of this: a friend of mine said that at her church camp, they used to sometimes sing the Doxology (a/k/a "Old Hundredth") to the tune of Hernando's Hideaway as a before-meal grace. I tried it - it works. [and as I'm of the persuasion to believe that God has a sense of humor, no, I don't see it as sacrilegious].)

"Away in a Manger" is like this, too - there is a tune more commonly used on this side of the Atlantic, and another tune more commonly used on the other side.

And I like that. I like that you can hear the familiar words in a new setting - I think it makes you hear them a different way.

So, at any rate - I'm going to listen to my "Christmas Adagios" album, and my one of carols from Tewkesbury Abbey this afternoon while I clean house. Then I'm going to sit down and knit and try to get myself into the Christmas mode. Heck, I might even take a little drive around town tonight after it gets dark to look at the lights people have up.

Because I want to be feeling Christmas, darn it, instead of just feeling tired and burnt-out.

So anyway: (I hope I'm not violating a copyright here)

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the yuletide gay
Next year all our troubles will be miles away
Once again as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who were dear to us
Will be near to us once more
Someday soon we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now