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Christmas holidays
My tree is up, and everyone is sending me wine and chocolate to help celebrate. I've been eating some fine delicious food, and enjoying the nice weather. Whether yours is spitting snow, buying some prawns for the grill, or just windy gusts of air on city streets, know that MM would enjoy sharing some Christmas cheer with you all.
Might I suggest some Christmas music? There's some great classics by my parents generation, and some new stuff that is just lovely.
Might I suggest some Christmas food. Home made eggnog with rum, or a fine Christmas ham can't be beat. Whether you like turkey, chicken quail or pigeon, (I'm going to leave out goose and duck because they are too greasy) why not tell me about some of your food traditions.
Is anyone doing something special for their work colleagues? Buying a cup of coffee? Bringing in some bagels or donuts to the crew? Maybe setting up a platter on the file cabinets?
And maybe some of you have special clothing. Like a big red sweater with a reindeer on it, or a tousled red cap like MM wears all month. Don't laugh. That's my THING.
And any special presents, games, or traditions for our furry love friends that we share our lives with.
I'd love to hear your stories. Here we do not say "Happy Holiday." we belt out a big loud "Merry Christmas!" What are your stories...?
Best wishes send the sky dragon joy in seeing the mountains thinking of all of you scattered around the world
Bonne fêtes de Noël , prenez soins de vous merci d avoir apporté la paix sur le monde , je vous envoie tout le bonheur avec la joie que j ressu aujourd'hui en cadeaux .
I just want to share a little video from my childhood. You may have seen it before, The Snowman. It was amazing back in 1982.
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Ce sera notre premier Noël avec le nom de domaine. Pouvons - nous leur souhaiter un Joyeux Noël et une grande joie de la part des gangs ici?
Quelques JPG ou Gifs simples pour exprimer notre plaisir et notre joie de rencontrer de nouveaux Amis.
This will be our first Christmas with the Domain. Can we wish them a merry Christmas and great joy from the gang here? Some simple jpgs or gifs to cross over and show our cheer and happiness in meeting new friends
This translate thing is quite fun. 😁
Xmas is my favourite holiday, and I thought it might be time to share photos of my tree on the forum, now that MM has graciously created this topic. As you can see, I have a flocked fake tree (Minnesota species). It's 210 cm tall, so it's the same height as an NBA small forward (about 6 feet 7-10 inches). It's 120 cm at it's fattest area (think a little bit longer than an emperor penguin lying down, or perhaps the same length of a 2 or 3 year old toddler human lying down). I have a snow village at the bottom, where the invisible Lilliputian elves live during the holidays. Behind are the "gift mountains" for the Elvin children to play on. They are always very careful so that the ribbons I carefully styled on the presents don't get mussed up. The other photos show "close ups" of the gifts, so you can see how the ribbons are done. I like the number and figure "8", so I styled the ribbons that way. Admittedly, I like wrapping the gifts in such a way that you KNOW it's from me just by looking at it.
I learned that some families have this tradition of hiding the gifts and refuse to display them under the tree until the 24th or 25th. I guess it's to keep the temptation of opening the gifts at bay (for the kids). They only care about what's inside, those munchkins! My philosophy is different. Of course you're supposed to care about the inside, but what about the outside? I have some very specific ideas about how I want some things to look, and I think a tree is more beautiful when it's stuffed to the brim with presents.
There are those who would roll their eyes on my insistence that the presents look "too beautiful to open". It will be ripped away and thrown into the trash, it's so wasteful. I do agree that it's wasteful, but don't you yearn for something that looks special? And it's just once a year anyway, just like our birthdays. Why can't we pull out all the stops at least once a year? I do love wrapping gifts, and I wish I could wrap gifts for all the people here on the forum (at least for those that like Xmas as a holiday and like giving and getting gifts).
I expect my in laws will prepare a roasted chapon (that's a castrated rooster) for Xmas lunch or dinner. the appetizer is always foie gras with spice bread. Or perhaps it's a pintade farcie (stuffed pheasant or pigeon fowl of some sort), which you can buy premade at the freezer section. It's ac tally pretty good. The stuffing would have some mushrooms. We once had fried fresh slices of foie gras, which I thought was great. But it was also a pain to prepare because it caused so much smoke in the kitchen.
My biological family located in the "empire heartland" always prepare a mix of Asian and American food, though there will be Mexican or Italian thrown in depending on which in law is adding food. The staple is honey baked ham with a brown sugar honey crust. Someone will make roast beef with pepper and garlic, lots of tender fatty bits. the juice is always used as a kind of gravy. There will be palabok, which is a Filipino style noodle dish with a yellow sauce, green onions, and slices of egg. My mom might make her "famous spaghetti", but it's not the same since she cut back the salt. Sometimes there is roast crispy whole pig. My days of eating crispy pig skin is over, unfortunately. Well, I can cut it up and chew in the back of my mouth I guess. I would say that the roast beef and crispy roast pork (especially the belly) is my favourite.
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@old-wine WOW! I am humbled by your gift wrapping ability! Love the tree and the faerie village at the base. We put a present under the tree ever few days starting in late October, and my daughter's surprise on her face is absolutely precious. She's a bit hard on the ornaments though. Must be the feline inside of her. I really love the meal description too!
More praise to come...
Hey MM (@laoban4site), I watched The Holiday with Wifey last night. Cameron Diaz properly plays a hollywood dipshit (watch her landscaper early on for some gold), Jude Law plays his usual limp-dick role, Jack Black and Kate Winslet get their roles right on vampire "friends;", but my favorite by far is our boy Eli Wallach in a minor, but perfect, role.
Overall though, a good movie.