I did a brief segment on holiday etiquette dilemmas on New England Cable News this morning:

View it here.

Good interview, but the ConductMom is right. I DO need to brush my hair in the back more!

Through Facebook, it was recently revealed to me that several of my friends were under the impression that “Up on the housetop, reindeer PAWS.” (The actual line is “reindeer pause.”)

Did you think this? Did you ever wonder why all other reindeer have hooves, but Santa’s have paws? (Genetics are complex, perhaps the mutation that allowed them to fly had unexpected consequences, sort of how like if you breed foxes for tameness they also develop floppy ears.)

Did you wonder who “Olive, the Other Reindeer” was? How about Round John Virgin? I’d heard those two mondegreens before, but not the reindeer one.

Because I am a theater geek, having to actually think about the lyrics of “Up on the Housetop” made me come up with A Very Pinter Christmas:

Scene: Up on the housetop.

Woman: Reindeer.

(Pause.)

But you don’t have to play my reindeer games. Instead, here’s an open thread for cute kid stories — your kids, or your own kid-hood — holiday-season misconceptions.

My own? Apparently, the first Christmas that I was cognizant at all of what was going on, I got really upset when it was time to go to bed on Christmas night (not Christmas Eve). Why? Because I’d taken “You’ll get presents on Christmas” extremely literally, and thought that they would disappear the next day as magically as they had appeared that morning!

This came up when I was chatting with a friend last night, and I can’t believe neither I nor any of the commenters thought of it back when we were discussing bad acronyms:

PCP for “Primary Care Provider.”

As I wrote to my friend (we were chatting on Facebook), “BTW, PCP = TLA WTF?”

As I mentioned, I’ve been tempted to do the occasional fashion-blog of my own outfits, as the dashing ladies of academichic and Already Pretty do, so here we go!

Because the focus of this blog — um, yes, this blog does have a focus, thank you very much! — is social behavior and how we live in the world, I think I’m only going to do this when I have some larger point to make besides “Dig my cool new belt!” So here’s the story on this outfit.

Every Wednesday during term at Harvard, the Rev. Peter Gomes of Harvard’s Memorial Church holds a tea from 5 to 6 at Sparks House, and about once a semester, I am invited to pour.

I poured last Wednesday, when it had been pouring outdoors (that Ugly Wintry Mix, remember?) for most of the day. I’d also been indoors writing for most of the day, swathed in layers of leggings and socks and sweatshirts. So I was very much of a mind to dress up a bit. In my writing about style, I’ve mostly focused on clothing and grooming as a way of communicating ourselves to others. That’s certainly important, but how we dress and fix ourselves up affects our own mood, as well. My mood wasn’t exactly an ugly wintry mix, but it was … foggy, shall we say. So I needed an outfit that would get my energy up, make me feel ladylike (as an etiquette columnist should while pouring tea at a minister’s house!) and playful.

I like to dress against the colors of the season, when the season is getting on my nerves. On a steamy August day, a black shift dress matched with a black sunhat and sunglasses makes me feel more like a sexy Mediterranean and less like a schvitzy pig. On the ugly winter days, springtime colors lift the mood. Try it sometime!

I’d also gone against my usually conservative makeup style and picked up a teal eyeliner — which looks surprisingly good on us hazel-eyed gals! — so an upbeat “Aprille with his shoures soote” green was to be the theme. Here’s how it looked. (We need to get a bit better at the photography; you can’t tell so much from the picture, but my tights are a sprucy green that complements the cardigan.)

Earrings: Utso Tibetan Boutique
Necklace: eBay
Tank top: Chico’s Travelers, eBay
Cardigan: J. Crew, eBay
Skirt: Leather, designer unknown, eBay
Bracelet: Victoria Tane, purchased at local art fair
Tights: We Love Colors
Boots: Dav rain boots from Designer Shoe Warehouse

What do you think? Would coming in from a cold dark night to fireplace-lit room and seeing a woman dressed like this, offering you a good hot cup of tea, lift your spirits into something better than an ugly wintry mix?

P.S. Those of you with experience in close textual analysis might notice a theme when it comes to the source of my clothing. Here are my tips on how to successfully shop for clothes on eBay.

P.P.S. Those books I’m using as a doorstop? Stephen King’s Desperation, The Regulators, and Nightmares and Dreamscapes. I needed a doorstop for that door, because my ironing board lives behind it, and I thought, “Y’know, people who hate on Stephen King always say you could use his books for doorstops.” Turns out they’re right.

… is online here.

I like this one a lot, I must say. And a thing to keep in mind about the “office Scrooges” — I’ve been realizing lately, mostly because of my Facebook network — how many people have lost a loved one during the holiday season. So that “Grinch” in your office might not be remembering Christmas past in terms of cookies and Charlie Brown. She might be remembering it in terms of chemo and hospice. Just a thing to keep in mind.

On the second question, too, about the non-drinker who is occasionally relentlessly grilled — the advice I give applies to other kinds of situations as well. I’ve used it myself, not about drinking, but about not having children. Asking me if I have kids is fine, but if my response then gets the third degree, or a negative reaction, I will say (calmly and cheerfully!), “I’m childless by choice, and I’m very happy with my life. But what if a person couldn’t have children and desperately wanted them? How do you think your questions would make them feel?”

And a question for my fellow members of the tribe: where do YOU stand on the latke-hamentaschen debate? I’m one of those much-courted swing voters, myself. “Nom, nom … yes, latkes, clearly superior … why, yes, I will try your hamentaschen … oh, these are much better, clearly hamentaschen should win … ah, your latkes with sour cream? Delicious … perhaps I should have some more just to make sure … but wait, the hamentaschen side is making an excellent apricot-filled rebuttal …”

Tired? Run-down? Not enough energy for all the family, work, and community obligations of the holiday season? Shaw’s Supermarket knows exactly how you feel:

You can find this graphic on their website, but it awesomely came up in a commercial last night during either “Parks and Recreation” or “The Office.” Reinforced Michael Scott’s statement that “Christmas isn’t about Santa, or Jesus — it’s about the workplace” in an oblique sort of way.

(Don’t even ask me why I’m still watching “The Office.” Just feeling too listless last night to turn the TV off after “Parks & Rec,” I guess.)

… is pretty much what the weather was in the Boston/Cambridge metro area yesterday. Thoroughly disgusting mishmosh of snow, rain, sleet, and mud. But the phrase stuck in my head, and made me think: hey, that’s a pretty good name for a drink. “I’ll have an Ugly Wintry Mix, please.”

So that’s your challenge! Come up with the Ugly Wintry Mix cocktail! It should

1) Resemble an ugly wintry mix, and
2) Be suitable for drinking on a day when the weather is an ugly wintry mix.

This is just for fun, not necessarily a contest … but if anyone comes up with something I really like, I’ll send you one of the last remaining author copies of Mind Over Manners that I’ve got lying around here!

Get mixin’!

Good grief, how the tempus does fugit! We were discussing career planning and all that a while back, remember? And I asked what kind of advice you’d gotten, best and worst? And geekgirl99 gave this as her worst career advice ever received: “If you could be happy doing anything else, you shouldn’t go into music,” and I got all excited and agreed with her loudly in a subsequent post. And then Shmeepod wrote a really interesting comment disagreeing with us, that I said I wanted to respond to, and never did, until now. Here’s what Shmeepod wrote:

At one point in my life I was very close to going to conservatory and embarking on a career as a professional musician. Now I am much happier doing something else and I have the “If you could be happy doing something else…” advice to thank for that. So I don’t think I am a person in the field who wants to feel special and I am not a non-artist who doesn’t realize that you can’t make a living in the field.

Many people in the fine arts community have had to overcome nay-sayers who have told them they could never make a living doing music or theater or whatever it is that they now do. I’ve noticed that this tends to create an attitude among career fine arts people that anyone who encourages a bit of thought or consideration before embarking on an arts career is just an uncultured meany who thinks that “no one can make a living as an artist”.

The problem is that young artists and musicians who are not sure whether or not they are suited for or even want to go into an arts career have no where to turn to get objective advice because their arts mentors will just think they are being influenced by uneducated nay-sayers. When I was making my decision, almost everyone I went to for advice (including my parents) encouraged me to stick with music for a career even after I expressed my dislike for rehearsals and practicing (both essential components of a music career). There is an overwhelming attitude that if a young person is good at some artistic endeavor then they must pursue it as a career.

Some young people, even though they may be incredibly gifted in the arts, would really be happier doing something else for a career. I think that thoughtfulness about what your passions are and what things really motivate you should be encouraged before deciding to embark on any career, but arts especially require real passion in order to be successful. You can still get by as a doctor or business person or scientist if don’t eat sleep and breath your career every minute of the day.

That is a really good counterpoint, and frankly, Shmeepod, I don’t think we disagree at all. (Except possibly about your last statement, but I’ll leave that to any doctors, businesspeople, or scientists among my readers to determine. If you want a career as an academic scientist, you really do have to eat, sleep, and breathe it every minute of the day.)

I’m sorry your advisers were idiots, which, frankly, they were. You don’t like rehearsing and practicing? Well heck no, you shouldn’t have been a musician! Your advisers sound like the kind of people who are so insecure in their own life choices that they have to continually push those choices on other people in order to validate themselves. If I can make Shmeepod become a musician, then that will prove that I was right to become a music teacher. It’s about the fears and hopes of the adviser, not the true desires of the advisee.

Because if you don’t like the process of a job, but only enjoy its final product, it’s the wrong job. I wrote about this kind of thing a year or so ago, and said, in part:

But here’s something to keep in mind: all jobs, all fields of endeavor have their drudgery, their boring side.

Choose one where you like the boring parts.

When I was in college, I was torn between journalism and theater (no surprise there, I suppose). What finally swayed me is that while I could see myself running the Op-Ed page of a major metropolitan daily, or going undercover to expose corrupt industries, or writing a wildly popular humor column, the idea of fact-checking obituaries made me want to scream. And that’s pretty much how you start out. I didn’t want to climb the ladder in journalism; I wanted to start on the middle rungs. But theater–oh, hell, I was happy just to be sweeping a stage. Cleaning paintbrushes. Running sound cues over and over and over. Bringing coffee to the director.

We have this weird notion in America that if you are good at something, you should do it, and if you should do it, you should do it professionally. How bizarre, really. For one thing, making money off something isn’t the only reason to do it. (Many of us enjoy the act of love; that does not mean we should join the oldest profession.) For another, let’s say you have Talent X. The official job for Talent X, however, will involve a lot of other skills and requirements that have nothing to do with X. How many of you good home cooks or bakers have been told, “You should open a restaurant!” or “You should be a caterer!” as though cooking talent is all that matters, as though people skills and entrepreneurial ability are just afterthoughts?

I think what I object to about the “If you could be happy doing anything else …” mantra is the notion that for each of us, there is One True Calling. For a few people, maybe, that’s how it works. For most of us? We could be happy doing a lot of things. It’s like the idea that there is One True Soulmate for each of us — a silly notion that has probably done a lot of harm, if people go around questioning the perfectly valid choices that they’ve made by thinking that having an awareness of viable alternatives means that they aren’t committed.

I was planning to blog today about your awesome comments on my “holiday joys and woes” post, and how although Hanukkah doesn’t do it for me on any level, what you wrote helped. Because I realized that all of your joys had to do with stuff you did — not consumed, not believed — so maybe I should just stop trying to figure out Hanukkah and fry a pancake already. And how this relates to a particular scene in the Torah and the concept of na’aseh v’nishma, and what it means to have “experiential learning” in a religion as intellectual and text-based as Judaism, and all that …

And then I saw this. Senator Orrin Hatch, a Mormon from Utah, has written a Hanukkah song.

Now, let me make two points:

1. His song actually doesn’t suck. (There’s a video linked, you can judge for yourself. It’s not great, but in the canon of Hanukkah music, there’s worse. Trust me.)
2. Irving Berlin wrote “White Christmas” (and also “Easter Parade”), so hey, it’s all good. This is America, buddy.

What is not all good is this:

At one point, Mr. Hatch unbuttons his white dress shirt to expose the golden mezuzah necklace he wears every day. Mezuzahs also adorn the doorways of his homes in Washington and Utah. Mr. Hatch keeps a Torah in his Senate office.

“Not a real Torah, but sort of a mock Torah,” he said. “I feel sorry I’m not Jewish sometimes.”

Well, dude, YOU AREN’T, so suck it the heck up. And I think “mock” Torah pretty well describes it. “Sort of a mock Torah”? How in the name of Ceiling Cat is this in any way showing honor to the Jewish people you claim to respect, Senator Hatch?

If you are not a member of a religious group, it does not honor the people who are to go using their sacred objects or religious symbols as freakin’ accessories. Got it? If you are given something as a gift, with the understanding that it is a cultural/artistic item representing a different faith, that is one thing. (I have a Ganesh statue that was given to everyone who attended a friend’s Big Fat Hindu Wedding a few years back, and some Ukranian Easter eggs from my Ukranian, Christian mother.) Otherwise, no. Religions are not sports teams. You don’t run around wearing the jersey because you like how we play the game. You can attend services, you can study the texts, you can join interfaith groups, you can eat the food, but you do not dress up like something you aren’t. (For more on that, see PeaceBang here.)

Senator Hatch of all people should know this. Interfaith pieties aside, we are not “all one.” Religions differ in fundamental ways. Senator Hatch is a Mormon, and Mormons apparently feel so strongly about protecting their own religious symbols and practices against the casual curiosity or faux-identification of “Mormons for a Day” that they don’t even allow non-Mormons into their temples or allow us to view certain ceremonies. And that’s their perfect right. What if I decided that I, a Jew, was nonetheless a big fan of the Mormonism, and wanted to express that by wearing temple garments under my clothes? Does that put it in perspective for you, Senator Hatch?

And yet, I must thank you. Because your offensive co-opting of my religion has, in fact, inspired me this Hanukkah. If you can celebrate my holiday, I sure as hell can. I am going to make those damn latkes, and I am going to get that wax off my menorah, probably by melting it off with the scorching gaze of my contemptuous laser-eyes and the hot breath of my profanity-laced rant at your discourtesy-masquerading-as-tolerance. (You folks think this is a profanity-laced rant? This is nothing. I can and do kick it “Deadwood“-style when necessary.)

So thank you, Senator Hatch, for teaching me the true meaning of Hanukkah. Which is, frankly, that we need to protect our religions. That we need to set boundaries. That courtesy is not only about acknowledging what binds us together, but about respecting what keeps us apart.

Teabag tag: “The mind is energy. Regulate it.”

Is that, like, a political statement masquerading as a bit of New Age advice? Kind of sounds like it to me. Drill, baby, drill!

For the history of the teabag-tag wars, go here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, and here.

… because this one, on my other blog, should get all the attention. (Feel free to keep discussing holiday joys and woes, though!)

Here’s a little cheer/chant I just made up:

What do busy bloggers do?
They punt the question back to you!
A question upon which to chew:
That’s what busy bloggers do!

Yep, got some stuff on my metaphorical plate today, so here’s a question for you all: what’s your favorite/least favorite part(s) of the holiday season? (Or, in bureaucratic terms, what are your holiday-related challenges and opportunities?)

My favorite parts:

1. The lights. Oh, the lights embroidering the blue-black velvet sky. My favorite are the dancers in Central Square.
2. Our Christmas Day tradition of a movie, followed by Chinese food, followed by whiskey and warm slice & bake cookies while watching amusing YouTube clips.
3. Those trippy Rankin-Bass specials! And Charlie Brown. And this:

My least favorite parts:

1. Christmas music pumped into the atmosphere 24/7, even on radio stations. Stores, okay, fine; it’s not like they’re playing better stuff the other 11 months of the year. But dang, can’t a girl get a little adult contemporary between Thanksgiving and the 25th? Because after one too many holiday parties, I do sometimes feel like rocking out to “Rehab.”
2. The “War on Christmas” morons, and anyone who doesn’t have the basic empathy to understand that being bombarded for over a month with the cultural symbols and practices of a holiday you don’t celebrate can, after a while, be wearing on a person. (And, seriously? As a former Christian who still takes Jesus’ message seriously, it seems that Black Friday and the hijacking of a religious holiday by consumerism is the real “war on Christmas.”)
3. Trying to get any spiritual meaning out of Hanukkah. There, I said it. Hanukkah doesn’t work for me. Remember when President Bush said, “”I couldn’t imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah”? I don’t know. Considering that Hanukkah celebrates the accomplishment of oil-hoarding militants who wanted to restore their religious practices to what they considered the original, pure form, preferably by force, I think bin Laden would be kinda down with it.
4. Not knowing how to make latkes or get the decades of accumulated wax off the menorah my in-laws gave us. Okay, that one’s on me. I could look it up.

How about you? And feel free to post any of your other seasonal musings, traditions, solutions, or kvetches as well!

UPDATE: Hey, all, I am really enjoying your thoughts (and recipes, and hey, blondmaggie, you could put in a link to your concert and that would be okay with me). You all always exceed my expectations for thought-provoking comments. If I’ve got any lurkers on this blog, I think this would be an excellent post on which to make your de-lurking debut.

… is online here.

Milo (right) and our houseguest Kaiser (left). This rather serene-looking photo does not nearly do justice to the epic, pitched battle of tug that was going on. Milo is a terrier mix with speed and home-field advantage; Kaiser is a French bulldog with terrific muscle power on his side. As Mr. Improbable put it, “It’s like watching a soccer player versus a sumo wrestler.”

The Ear Club for Dogs: they’re not just members, they’re the presidents.