Sunday Stealing: Lola’s Holiday Meme

This week’s meme comes from StaceyC4 of All Stace, All the Time, but it was authored by Lola at Lola’s Diner, one of my favorite blogs.

Lola’s Hol­i­day Meme

1. What is your favorite hol­i­day show/animated show?

It isn’t Christ­mas with­out “A Char­lie Brown Christmas.”

2. What hol­i­day char­ac­ter do you think you’re most like?

Mary Bai­ley Hatch, Marlo Thomas’ char­ac­ter in “It Hap­pened One Christ­mas,” her 1977 remake of “It’s a Won­der­ful Life.”

3. Favorite Christmas/holiday song?

There are so many beau­ti­ful Christ­mas car­ols that I love to play … I guess if I had to pick just one if would be “Lo, How a Rose E’re Blooming.”

Lo, how a Rose e’er bloom­ing
from ten­der stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lin­eage com­ing,
as those of old have sung.
It came, a flow­eret bright,
amid the cold of win­ter,
when half spent was the night.

Isa­iah ’twas fore­told it,
the Rose I have in mind;
with Mary we behold it,
the Vir­gin Mother kind.
To show God’s love aright,
she bore to us a Sav­ior,
when half spent was the night.

4. Most hated Christmas/holiday song?

“Blue Christ­mas” as recorded by Elvis Pres­ley. It is the most annoy­ing hol­i­day song ever recorded. I’m also not fond of “Do You Hear What I Hear?”

5. If you have an all hol­i­day music radio sta­tion when do you start lis­ten­ing to it?

There is a radio sta­tion in Sacra­mento that began broad­cast­ing hol­i­day music exclu­sively before Thanks­giv­ing. Com­cast also broad­casts a tele­vi­sion sta­tion called “Sounds of the Sea­sons” that plays clas­sic hol­i­day tunes.

6. If you have an all hol­i­day music radio sta­tion do you love it or hate it?

I tune in the Com­cast sta­tion reg­u­larly. For instance, when I had three long-time friends over for brunch yes­ter­day, we enjoyed hav­ing hol­i­day tunes play­ing as we vis­ited. It is fun to hear the record­ings of Bing Crosby, Tony Ben­nett, Dean Mar­tin, Andy Williams, Frank Sina­tra, The Car­pen­ters, et al. that I lis­tened to when I was grow­ing up, as well as con­tem­po­rary ver­sions of the famil­iar songs and carols.

7. Have you ever wrapped your­self as a Christ­mas present? Come on…you can tell!

That had truly never occurred to me until now.

8. Who is Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer’s father?

In the orig­i­nal book by Robert L. May and song writ­ten by Johnny Marks (and orig­i­nally recorded by Gene Autry), Rudolph’s par­ents are not men­tioned. How­ever, in later ani­mated tellings of the story, Don­ner and Blitzen are both referred to as his father.

9. Do you drive your neigh­bor­hood or one near you at night to look at other people’s hol­i­day decorations?

Yes. The local news­pa­pers run arti­cles on the most elab­o­rately dec­o­rated homes and we usu­ally make it a point to swing by and have a look.

10. When you see a heav­ily dec­o­rated house do you think, ‘oh that’s lovely’? Or do you think, ‘oh crim­iny, that looks like Christ­mas threw up all over their lawn’?

It depends on the taste level of the dec­o­ra­tions. There are a cou­ple of homes here in Lodi that are heav­ily dec­o­rated, but the dis­plays are beau­ti­ful — impec­ca­bly designed and exe­cuted. Then there are the usual dis­as­ter zones … Don’t tell my next-door neigh­bors but their house is one of the lat­ter. Essen­tially, any dis­play that is founded upon blue lights placed on the eaves is not going to turn out well. I hate all-blue chains of Christ­mas lights.

11. Are you count­ing the days to Christ­mas with excited antic­i­pa­tion or dread?

Nei­ther. I’m just coast­ing along, enjoy­ing my well-deserved vaca­tion. I know that the week will fly by and it will be Christ­mas Eve before we know it. But that’s just fine because we are ready.

12. When was the last time you had your photo taken with Santa? Did you sit on his lap?

The last time I remem­ber hav­ing my photo taken with Santa was in 1978. My late friend Greg Morales was por­tray­ing the jolly fel­low at the local mall. Yes, I sat on his laugh and we were gig­gling hys­ter­i­cally when the pic­ture was taken.

13. When do you put up your tree?

This year, the tree went up ear­lier than it has in many years. We put it up on the first Fur­lough Fri­day of the month, Decem­ber 4, one week after Thanks­giv­ing. I am really enjoy­ing it this year because there is a per­fect spot for it in the liv­ing room of my new house (it was really too large for my other home), and we have the train run­ning around it.

Our Christ­mas tree before we added the ornaments.

14. Real or fake?

Because I have both asthma and aller­gies, we have an arti­fi­cial tree.

15. When do you take your tree down?

When I was a child, we always took down the Christ­mas tree and put all of the dec­o­ra­tions away on New Year’s Day. I have always car­ried on that tra­di­tion, with New Year’s Eve being the last evening that the tree is lit. For me, it wouldn’t seem like New Year’s Eve with­out the Christ­mas tree, but New Year’s Day is a new begin­ning, so it feels appro­pri­ate to put away the old and look for­ward to what the new year holds in store.

16. Do you shop the day after Christ­mas sales? What do you shop for?

Absolutely not. I always get together with friends who are in town.

17. Is your work/office hav­ing a hol­i­day party this year? Will you attend?

There was a get-together this past week, but I was out of town on busi­ness, so I did not attend.

18. Do you have your New Year’s Eve Plans set yet?

We’ll have a lovely din­ner at home. So far, the menu includes spinach salad, prime rib, and baked pota­toes, as well as wine. The boys will have sparkling apple cider.

Click here to see the list of other par­tic­i­pants, visit their sites, and read their responses.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Lola’s Hol­i­day Meme, Sun­day Stealing

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