Sorry that these are so hastily put together (Mrs J is pulling me towards the door for christmas shopping) and if anyone has any better ones, feel free to chuck extra questions into the comments box.
1. All families have some kind of quirky tradition that is practiced only by them. So, what's your quirky christmas family tradition?
2. What christmas tradition can't you stand that you would like to do away with?
2. I know we shouldn't mention music, but it's christmas so all indiscretions are surely forgiven! Personally, I love cheesy christmas songs. What's your bestest cheesy christmas song?
3. Which public figure would you most like to give a christmas present to? Who would it be and what is the gift?
5. New Year's Reolutions are made to be broken of course, but you've got to make 'em to break 'em. So, what are your resolutions for 2010?
30 comments:
1. Quirky tradition
We played touch football no matter what the weather.
3. Bestest song?
Little Drummer Boy
4. Public figure
U.S. Senate - a week's homestay with a working poot family
5. Resolutions
Gain height. Dr says I'm too heavy for mine
Well done for pulling this together Japanther, it's a busy time.
1. Unless you count Mr Munday staying in bed till midday, when the sprog present-frenzy is over, we don't really have any.
2. The only thing that bugs me about it is the commercialisation, and the fact that it all seems to start in September.
3. Jona Lewie and 'Stop the Cavalry' - diddle iddle om pom, diddle iddle om pom ...
4. It's no good, nothing much is coming to me. How about a month with Greenpeace for President Obama?
5. To continue my splendid weight-loss effort of 2009. Just as soon as the mince pies are finished ...
5.
Oh, if you count childhood traditions, we always had a dainty glass of tomato juice with Christmas dinner. No idea why but it never seemed odd at the time.
1) not exactly quirky, but every Christmas morning, no matter what the weather is like the extended Mrs Zag family gather and walk down the pier, take a photo and walk back up again. It's been through a few generations now. We had to bail out one year when the kids were teeny tiny and the wind was really biting. We retreated to a nearby Great Grand Aunts house for a nice cup of tea instead.
2) serving Christmas cake *and* Christmas pudding *and* trifle. I mean, on what other day of the year do people get 3 desserts ?
2 again) just for the fun of it - Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. Although Grandma Zag passed away this year so I don't think there'll be too much singing of this in the house this time around.
3) Slightly off-kilter perhaps, but 'that homeless guy/lady' that we all know. Food & warmth and not just for a day.
5) Clear the mail backlog in work. Ha, ha, haaaaaaa . . . like that's ever going to happen.
Nollaig shona dhuit,
z
1. My family go to church. Twice on Xmas Eve and once on Xmas morning. Bloody weirdos.
2. Gift giving - for anyone over the age of 18 anyway. Pointless waste of time and money. (Who here doesn't just buy things as and when they want or need them?) Bah humbug.
2 (sic). Is "2000 Miles" too classy? It's probably my fave Xmas song. Otherwise, I'm with AliM on "Stop The Cavalry".
3. As I was saying in answer to the first question 2...
5. I always vow to make more of an effort to end my perennial single status. *sigh* Perhaps not being such an old curmudgeon would help!
1) WE don't really have quirky traditions but we try and have a different Christmas lunch each year.
2) The Queen's speech. Do away with the Queen too.
3)I love the entire Phil Spector Christmas album.
4) I'd like to give David Cameron some sincerity, and a P45.
5) I don't do resolutions.
1) Father Christmas visits our family at teatime on Christmas day and leaves stocking fillers for both adults and children. I have no idea why he does this.
2) All the adverts that pretend Christmas is all about Asda, M & S, Iceland, Waitrose, Joe's Nuclear Waste Emporium etc.
2B) Any version of Walking In A Winter Wonderland (unless it's an advertising jingle).
3) Elizabeth Filkin - a written apology from the House Of Commons and a duck island if she wants one.
5) I always resolve to give up setting fire to great public buildings.
1. Getting up insanely early in order to see if 'Santa's been' - needless to say, I dont practice it myself.
2. Honestly, I think the whole thing probably. Lets just celebrate every Friday on a smaller scale. No presents, just a bit more general jolity. Friday now means more than Christmas as a word. It means something spiritual - it means 'Hark, there soundeth the factory bell and the office whistle'
3. Xmas Paper by my friend Dan and his side-project band Shitfinger (you'll make his Christmas if you check it out - but distract the kids when you do)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dabw6ZTTWOc
4. Simon Cowell. A course in basic musical appreciation and a Gold Watch
5. a. To run three times a week - not less
b. To focus on joy and pass it on.
c.To take my b--s in my hands and hit the studio floor running.
There. I think that sums it up nicely.
Merry Christmas to ya Japanther!
As I'm trying to pretend that Christmas isn't really happening, I'll swerve these questions, if you don't mind. But I sincerely hope everyone enjoys it all.
A message for tfd: the weekly dip into the Grateful Dead vaults on their website has a sequence from 1989 this week that features Clem Clemons on sax (or 'saxamaphone' as it is written). As a way in, you may care to have a listen: http://www.dead.net/features/tapers-section/week-december-21-december-27-2009
excellent answers so far and I couldn't resist checking out Shitfinger, Sourpus....pretty funny! I hope it's not a true story!
time to answer my own questions then...
1. we've got a few in our house, but one is that on christmas evening friends come round and we all smoke cigars.
2. I DO love it all but all of the hype and build up gets a bit much (at least it used to do, i'm shielded from it somewhat over here) to the point that it's almost like being forced to have a good time.
3. As I said I do love the classics; Wham, Slade, Wizzard and i'll go for Chris De Burgh as a favourite (that Europop version was pretty ace ShariVari!)
4. Hmm, that's a tough one (i know I know, they are my questions!). Maybe an arrest warrant for Nick Griffin.
5. I've got loads:
- start doing yoga
- learn to drive
- start studying Japanese properly again
- PUT ON weight - I just seem to keep losing it!
- eat at least one piece of fruit every day
- drink less
etc etc.....
1. Well, when we wake up in the morning we get to admire the tree with all the presents at its feet, but it's not time to open them yet because we go to church, back from church, nope not time to open the presents yet, we have.. to sing carols in front of the tree. Then the youngest opens its present, sitting on a chair. And you have to wait your turn, by order of age, before you get to open yours. Also, you have to hoot and holler whenever the "king" opens a present. It gets very loud. Basically, Christmas is a very long affair in our house, especially as there are 10 of us these days.
2. The idea of "war on Christmas". Both from those who feel Christmas is being attacked, and those who go overboard and want us to celebrate Winterval.
3. Nat King Cole's Christmas album is getting a lot of airplay around here.
4. Arsene Wenger. I noticed on MOTD that he has a really flimsy, fray belt. He needs a new one. And maybe a new tie too. And a striker and a defensive midfielder.
5. I don't believe in New Year's resolutions, I hate the whole concept of New Year's on the 1st of January, but some of the resolutions I regularly make are the usual: lose weight, be more "serious with my shit" (M. Davis), etc.
1. We make a dinner from a different part of the world each year - based mostly on the Sundays at Moosewood cookbook (Nilfperd knows what I'm talking about.)
2. Lots of the commercialization-of-the-holiday type things. But I've found it pretty easy to ignore, since we don't watch TV and we live pretty far away from any mall-ish places.
2. The Waitresses' one, can't remember what it's called.
3. Barack Obama. I'd send him a message that says "don't compromise on Health Care reform!!" Of course we need a public option.
4. To be more creatively productive - there's that film I'm going to make, and the children's book, and the novel...
1. As kids we always used to get our pressies wrapped in torn, ripped or otherwise unusable Galt Toys bags. Never in proper Christmas wrapping paper. Mum had a Galt's franchise in the Craft Centre she had and it was, I suppose, her way of re-using paper. An eco-trailblazer maybe.
2. None, really.
3.Merry Xmas Everybody - always been a big Slade fan.
4. A mirror for Tony Blair. How long is it since he had a proper, long, hard look in one?
5. Oh, give up smoking, I suppose.
Thanks for these questions Japanther. Have a wonderful Christmas.
Maki, I used to buy loads of Galt toys when my kids were little.
1 Well, we always used to use those Woolworth's stockings - the white mesh ones with the red crepe paper edging. Dunno what we'll use now.
2 Everybody putting up outdoor lights. Even more than usual this year. Looks daft if you live in the middle of nowhere.
3 Bruce's Santa Claus Is Coming To Town. You better be good, for goodness' sake!
(Sorry folks, but Stop The Cavalry is my least favouritest. Playing in EVERY shop I've been into for the last month. What is it even about?)
4 Gordon Brown needs some Get Your Finger Out Man pills.
5 Not to eat chocolate. Ha. Some hope.
TFD - if you were ever in Saltburn by the Sea (N.Yorks)- you bought them from my mum!
Sounds good, Steen. We ought to try that ourselves.
1. Instead we have culture clash food- I'll be doing a quiche followed by lamb shoulder and steamed vegetables, but Sandra's sister and mother insist on bringing Romanian Sarmale (cabbage wraps) and various other specialities. Though they won't turn their noses up at my lamb when it's on the plate. We have a similar dilemma at new year's- Champagne, Whiskey, or Tsuica (Romanian plum schnapps)? Not surprising, we normally end up smashed.
2. None in particular, I quite like the German christmas with its focus on calm, stuffing yourself with food, picturesque market stalls, and candle lit fir trees with hand-made decorations.
3. Based on childhood listening I always get goosebumps when the Bing Crosby sung classics come on- I saw three ships, Let it snow, etc.
4. Two here, equally opposed.
I'd like to make the gift of irreversible freedom to Aung San Suu Kyi and a compulsory "go directly to the Hague" travel voucher to Ratko Mladic.
5. I feel like I've got enough on my plate at the moment without setting myself unreachable goals, and the (for me) reachable ones are really too trivial to mention.
Maki - no, I wasn't, so no, I didn't!
There's a firm in Cornwall called Holtz who sell similar toys...don't know whether they're vampire hunters in their spare time. Their website doesn't say. (esoteric joke)
TFD - would be fun if they were descendants of Daniel. All those wooden toys and stuff - bound to be a good trusty stake in there somewhere!
Maki: you can be in our gang.
Thanks TFD!
minor xmas threadjack - if anyone wants the mp3s of the new Animal Collective "Fall Be Kind" EP that came with my vinyl copy, please email me via the sidebar!
Samples the Grateful Dead too, y'know...
It's good, also....
Yes it is, it's lovely!
1.Waiting til after xmas lunch to open presents
2. the desire of folks to get to the sales just days after being given a head of stuff. I think that's called greed, folks.
3. The Raveonette's Christmas Song is the best ever
4. Can I bring John Peel back to life somehow?
5. Make one video that I'm truly happy with (that then wins awards)....not too much to ask for.....
Dropping into this without having read anything that has been posted before (will do that tomorrow@work...):
1. Becoming a tradition: a nice (mountain)bikeride with the now 11 year old son of my brother, living in the city he loves it here in the hilly countryside, visiting the (his)/my (grand)parents for Christmas...
2. The godawful christmas-decorations people people put in their gardens/on their houses....
3. Cheesy: Wham's 'Last Christmas', just because I love the video, recorded in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, that's were TonNL spends his holidays....
4. No inspiration at the moment, might answer this one later
5. Doing a lot more miles/kilometers on my mountainbike than this year... Did about 6000 kilometers on my normal & racebike, but just a couple of fun trips on my MTB, have to take that MTB out more often in 2010!
3. Non-cheesy: Low - Silent Night
@Ejay - we do the" taking it in turns while every person watches so it takes ages and ages to unwrap the presents" thing. I think it's great! it prolongs the fun and gives that extra appreciation.
1. 2. 2.?? 3. __ ?? 5. I think someone's been at the saki a little early!
;o)
1. New pyjamas / nighties for all the family on Christmas Eve. No idea about its origins: must ask me mam ...
2. I have to agree with those sentiments about our obscene overconsumption of material goods we don't actually need.
2. White Christmas, probably; appropriate this year as we sit surrounded by a good six inches of the stuff all around the house.
3. Twofold: I'd like to give Rafa Benitez the Real Madrid head coach's job that has been his life ambition. And then I'd like to give Guus Hiddink his own parking space where Kemlyn Road used to be.
Sorry, but my patience and faith has finally run out.
5. (i) To earn enough to feel I can afford the gym membership again. (ii) To have enough free time to get back to my 150min-program or 90min-swim, 3-times-weekly sessions at said gym. Of course, the fact that (i) & (ii) are by definition likely to be mutually exclusive, means the breaking part of the resolution should come easily!
Cheers, everyone.
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