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Holidays

Christmas Makes Me Cry

I really like Christmas music. It’s probably my favourite (genre-crossing) “genre.” I like the sleigh bells and the half-diminished chords and the general preoccupation with nostalgia. I like the self-indulgent arrangements just on principle. I like that Christmas songs pull at your emotions, especially because, at this time of year I tend to get a little1 overwhelmed and sometimes have the impression that my emotions are stuck or even missing altogether. So I have a lot of favourite Christmas songs, including (I’m not ashamed to admit)… Read More »Christmas Makes Me Cry

More Room in My Head

Leading up to the show, I had so many things on my mind – more than once I drew the comparison between organizing the show and planning a wedding, and I don’t think I was exaggerating as much as it might have sounded like I was exaggerating. My poor brain was packed full of details, most especially because this was our first time doing anything like this. Well, it’s over, and although at first there was some weird stress surrounding the idea that we had… Read More »More Room in My Head

HALLOWE’EN (Or, And now back to your regularly scheduled programming)

(Written mostly on Monday, Oct. 30) I love Hallowe’en. My “favourite holiday” is a bit of a moving target, but Hallowe’en often appears in the crosshairs. (Other contenders include the secular part of Christmas and also whichever one is coming up next.) I hate being scared. I really do. I take no joy in haunted houses, think jump scares are one of the worst things ever occur to a filmmaker, and I think that as an adult I might like The Nightmare Before Christmas but… Read More »HALLOWE’EN (Or, And now back to your regularly scheduled programming)

Holidays, Nostalgia, and Grief

There’s something about holidays that calls to nostalgia. And among holidays, for me, Christmas is the one that stirs up memories like more or less nothing else. And then those memories set off other memories and… well, I cry a lot around the end of the year. Nostalgia, my quick Google search tells me, is widely considered to be a good thing nowadays. It promotes all kinds of good stuff in the psyche. I won’t summarize the research because better sources already have (heck, Wikipedia… Read More »Holidays, Nostalgia, and Grief

Trunk Day

The year we first moved out of our parents’ homes and into our first place together, we bought all kinds of new Christmas decorations. And we kept them conveniently stored in the trunk of our car. We kept them there until the joyous day we had decreed that we would take them into the house and decorate. The day we called… Trunk Day. Trunk Day falls every year on December 1st, or the closest reasonable day for putting in the time it takes to decorate.… Read More »Trunk Day