Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the winter holidays. Give me a seasonal celebration around food, family, lights and merriment and I’m IN. I hope everyone has a reason to celebrate something around the solstice, and I love learning about and celebrating other cultural and religious traditions that also happen this time of year.

My default happens to be Christmas, and every year I get a little bug up my arse about how badly most people have screwed up the timing around it.

Jesus doesn’t need to be the reason for the season, but if you’re going to co-opt part of the Christian ritual, at least understand what it really means, so you look like less of a dummy next year.

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up:

THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS START ON CHRISTMAS DAY!

The time we’re in now? Leading up to Christmas? It’s called Advent, and it’s 24 days long, counting down from the 1st of December to Christmas Day. For Christians, it’s a time of anticipation and preparation to celebrate the birth of Christ.

For everyone else, it’s a time to open the doors on your little chocolate calendar one day at a time.

It is entirely separate from the twelve days of Christmas.

Then, Christmas Day! I think everyone is pretty clear on that.

But! Christmas Day is also the first day of Christmas! See how that works? All neat and tidy and easy to remember?

I can see how people might be confused, since the last verse of the famous song lists gifts in reverse, but it does start with the “First Day of Christmas.”

It’s a count up, not a count-down, ending in Epiphany on the 6th of January.

The traditions around Epiphany get a little messy at this point, depending on which flavour of Jesus-freak you might be, but it’s usually tied to celebrations around the baptism of the Christ-child, and the origins of things like The Feast of the Three Kings, and the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

So, clear as mud? Really, if you’re excited enough about the holidays to start talking “12-days,” you should be pleased with this news, since it means I’ve just extended your celebration season nearly an entire fortnight!

But if you like to cease the celebrations as soon as the clock strikes midnight on December 25th, put the talk of the 12-days away. You don’t get to have your King Cake and eat it too.

And seriously, if you insist on continuing to screw this up, behind my holly, jolly eggnog mustache and candy cane smile, I am totally judging you.

The best possible mixy-mash-up of the 12 Days of Christmas.

From Sasha and Santa and Neil and I.

Wishing you much cheer, fine company, great food and elastic pants.

I love Christmas like a fat kid loves cake.

So it pains me to admit this year, I kindof hate our tree.

Specifically, the lights.

We switched to all LED lights this year for our tree, and (as I suspected they might be) they are aesthetically hideous.

The thing I love about a beautiful Christmas tree is turning out the regular lights, and basking in the warm glow it casts over the room. The light catches the sparkle of the ornaments and plays up the shadows and bright spots through the green branches.

LED lights just don’t do that. Their output is so low that they barely illuminate themselves, nevermind things around them. They are eerie, otherworldly pinpoints, distracting and ruining an otherwise beautiful and charming centrepiece of holiday decor.

Instead of the tree casting a warm glow over the room, the room is dim and dark, and reminiscent of an after-hours office, lit by the glow of a computer monitor someone accidentally left on. The ornaments are completely lost. The tree looks like a bushy blob.

These fucking lights are ruining my Christmas.

I am very tempted to rip these POS lights out and re-do the tree with the beautiful incandescents that actually look like Christmas. But since this is a cut tree, that’s just a disastrous mess waiting to happen.

But you’d better believe these lights are going straight on Craigslist the instant Christmas is over this year. I’d throw them in the trash outright, if they weren’t also so bloody expensive. Though I kindof want to anyhow, just as an extra Fuck You to this failed attempt at environmental friendliness.

I’ll probably just buy a festive, Christmas Lamp to offset the creepy factor in that room. But you’d better believe it’ll have an incandescent bulb, bitches.

I’ve told many people about one of my favourite Christmas Decorations: Satanic Fiber-Optic Santa, and now that we’ve hauled out most of the decorations for another year, I shot a quick video of him last night, so you may also share in the horror glory!

The jingling/clicking noises in the background are the dog – but the grainy sound quality and ill-timed looping are 100% authentic Creepy Santa.

Happy Holidays, and please Ho Ho Hope he doesn’t kill me in my sleep!

Hello lovelies!

I hope everyone had a fantastical Christmas (or whatever it is that you do or do not celebrate). Despite a rocky start with the weather being what it was, mine turned out really quite splendid. Also, our ambitious feast for 14 featuring a homemade turducken was nothing short of awesome.

Of course, after two days of maddening prep, then the whirlwind of Christmas Day itself, some serious napping was in order for Boxing Day, and now we’re fully in the thick of a few days holiday visiting.

Really, while all the anticipation and preparation is fun, I really fully feel like it’s time for Christmassing from Christmas day on through until after New Year’s. And while I usually have to be back at work before the 12th day of Christmas (January 6th – the feast day Epiphany for those playing along at home), I stay pretty firmly entrenched in Holiday Mode as close to then as possible.

So personally I’m always a bit taken aback when I see people stripping their house of any trace of festivities at the crack of dawn on December 26th. I’ve seen an increasing number of barren trees, bare walls and dark lights for a couple days now. It’s pretty foreign to me.

Despite the religious roots of the 12 days, I don’t personally keep the tree and lights up here for those reasons, it’s just the way I’ve always experienced the holidays with a group of family and friends who also keep their decorations out for about the same length of time.

And so, gentle readers, I’m curious about you. If you do celebrate Christmas, when do you put up and take down your decorations? Any rhyme or reason for it? Is it a traditional holdover from how Christmas was done when you were small, or your own take on the season?

Cookie Party by the numbers.

Ladies descended on my house: 9
Stand mixers going simultaneously: 2
Hand mixers also running: 2
Hours of continuous baking: 5
Pounds of butter used: 12
Adorable babies passed around: 1
Batches of fudge the dog managed to get to: 1
Trays of cookie casualty (landed on the floor): 1
Containers of chocolate sprinkles used to coat rum balls: 9
Types of Christmas Goodies pumped out in one day: 10
Number of cookies baked during all this: 1000+

Just a quick follow-up from that Christmas Tree post from late last month.

We found a tree! In the city no less.

We had fully intended to drive out to the Fraser Valley to visit a tree farm and chop down our own, but it turned out that wasn’t really necessary. We found a small tree lot in a parking lot on 12th at Main, and brought home a Noble Fir.

Our problem seemed to be that we tried to get a tree a bit too early. Apparently the tree lots open on December 1st, and not a moment sooner – nevermind that was a Monday this year, and we wanted to get the tree on the weekend. Oh well.

As for the coloured vs. white lights dilemma – I like white lights, Neil likes multi-coloured. I’ve always felt it was a bit of a compromise to have the multi-coloured lights outside, and keep the tree white. But Neil was pushing for the coloured tree lights this year.

Turns out frugality won out in the end, and we have both multi-coloured and white lights in the tree.

Since we were about to move this time last year, we didn’t really decorate, so we had really lost track of what we have in terms of Christmas Decor. And when we pulled out the lights, we found we’ve got two strings of white lights that work, and one string of coloured.

The tree needed 3 strings of lights, so the coloured went up the middle, and the white around the outside. And I’ve got to admit, the effect is quite nice!

How about you? Have you got a tree up? What’s it look like?

Oh it’s that time of year again! It’s almost time for Christmas trees!

I admit, I used to be an artificial tree kinda gal. My family had artificial trees for many, many years, and I got my own small, plastic tribute to the season when I moved out on my own.

And then I met Neil, who was having none of that.

So it’s been real trees ever since. They really do smell better.

Problem is, I have no idea where to get one this year. Our neighbourhood lot of years past is now a construction site. So I turned to Google for some help.

Did you know that Christmas tree sellers have not yet harnessed the power of the internets?

I know. Crazy!

But I also learned that there is a BC Christmas Tree Council. They need a council, but can’t manage to work on some SEO.

Anyhow, I digress.

The BC Christmas Tree Council at least has a website, and they have a bunch of listings for places in and around the province where one can purchase a fresh tree.

(Another aside – many of those tree farms do have websites, but my google-fu was not strong enough to find them.)

So in a couple weeks, we’ll head out and hack down one of nature’s specimens for our very own decorating pleasure. Hurrah!

Are you putting up a tree this year? Have you already? Live or Artificial?

And most importantly, settle an argument for Neil and I – white or multicoloured lights in the tree?

Christmas Angel

Originally uploaded by peechie.

Merry Christmas to all of you from all of us at Chez Watercooler.

As promised (and thanks to many of the angels out there on the internets), a list of the charities who are benefitting from a collective of Christmas Cheer this year:

Books for Asia
The BC SPCA
WHAS Crusade for Children
War Child International
Union Gospel Mission
Spare the Cold

Thanks to all of you for speaking up and naming your charities. We donated a total of $225 to your favourite charities (and mine) this Christmas.

I certainly hope that everyone has a wonderful day, whatever you celebrate, and that you’re surrounded with people you love, who love you right back.

Despite the cheery snowboarding penguins on my new holiday-themed coffee mug, I’m still having trouble fully acknowledging it’s December already.

But December it is – and that means it’s holiday card time!

If you’ve been reading for a year or so, you know the drill – send an email to jen [at] thisdomain [dot] com with your mailing address, and in a couple weeks you should receive some snail-mail greetings from yours truly.

And I’ve decided to do something a little new and different this year: in the spirit of the holidays, I’ve decided to give everyone a gift!

In my world, a gift is something that means something special to the recipient and will make them feel good, thus making the giver feel good, and everyone wins! Since I’m not lucky enough to know you all personally, I’m going to depend on you to tell me what that is.

Specifically, when you send your address. tell me which charity you’d like me to make a contribution to. The only requirement is that your charity of choice is a registered charitable organization (no Human Fund requests!). I’d also love to hear a bit about why the charity is one close to your heart.

One last rule: all requests must come from an actual human who is willing to share his or her name and is willing to receive some mail. I’ll fully admit that this is a somewhat selfish act, and giving to you makes me feel good. Giving on behalf of kitten1234@hotmail.com isn’t nearly as rewarding.

I’ll accept requests up until 11:59pm on December 24th, and I’ll publish the list of the organizations that will benefit from your gifts on Christmas Day. I won’t publish the total donated, but I will note in my card to you how much I donated to your charity of choice. This amount will fluctuate, depending on the total number of requests I get.

Let the giving begin!