Every year since 2010 I’ve done a series of December diaries focusing on a variety of seasonal topics ranging from music to food to ugly sweaters. (Full disclosure: I did ONE Seasonal diary in 2008, and 2009 was the first December K2 was with us so I was a little distracted :-)). You can find them all, tagged with #seasonal, and yes I have a spreadsheet so I know what topics I’ve done recently!
It’s time to do it again here in We’re Pretending Everything Is Normal But We Really Know It’s A Hot Viral Mess Out There 2022! Don’t worry if Christmas isn’t your thing- while my personal December perspective is primarily secular but culturally Christian-based with a vibrant dose of earth-centered Winter Solstice mixed in with Unitarian Universalism, these diaries are NOT meant to be siege locations in the War On Christmas. In other words, if there’s a holiday in December that makes you happy, that you mark differently than all the other days, or that involves negotiating who brings what food and whether or not everyone did their rapid-antigen test… or even if there isn’t... this is a place for you and I really hope you’ll bring yourself to the comments!
We kicked off the 2022 Seasonal Series with a look at the traditions we keep and those we change (or is that begin for the first time?). Today, let’s take a look at something Casa Brillig spent a lot of talk and text time on this weekend… The List. No, not the Naughty and Nice List! The OTHER list…
When I was a child back in the Olden Days (that’s before the internet, folks!), sometime around Thanksgiving the catalogs would come. The Wish Book would arrive from Sears, and also the Montgomery Ward (where my maternal grandmother worked!!) one. We got one from JC Penney too, and I know we got bigger-than-usual inserts in the Sunday paper. My friends and I (and later my little sister and I) would pore over the pages, marking and circling what we wanted. Then we’d make lists with catalog and page numbers, just to make sure there was no mistake… feels like an early form of hotlinking :). My memory is too foggy to remember exactly but I know there also was a list for Santa, generally with lots of info about how good I’d been during the past year, and I suspect he checked with my parents to confirm item details LOL.
Over the years those lists have turned into Amazon wishlists and Google docs shared with family via text message and email. Mr. Brillig and I have always tried to get things from our children’s lists, and for each other as well. Yes, sometimes we go off-road so to speak, because an idea for the perfect gift presents itself. This year, between inflation and tuition for K2’s new school, we’re sticking to the list because we want to make sure people get exactly what they want. K1 tends to split gifting between what we listed and what presents itself during the season that ‘looks right’ for us. K2 in general NEVER uses our lists, although he is VERY specific with his! Of course, somehow most of his gifts in recent years were ‘delayed in shipping’ which really means, according to information from a confidential ::cough::K1::cough:: source, that he ordered them on Christmas Eve :).
How about you? Are you a wish-list maker or user? Do you get what someone asks for or search for the gift they don’t know they want? Do tell in the comments, after perusing the day’s Tops!
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Those TC mailboxes are emptier than Santa’s Workshop on December 26th. Have I been put on the Naughty List and am getting no noms as a result? cmon folks!!
TOP MOJO
Top Mojo for yesterday (Sunday), December 11th 2022, first comments and tip jars excluded. Thank you mik for the mojo magic! For those of you interested in How Top Mojo Works, please see his diary on FAQing Top Mojo.
TOP PICTURES
Top Pictures for yesterday (Sunday), December 11th 2022. Click any picture to be taken to the full comment or picture. Thank you to the wonderful dKos staff who made it possible to continue this feature in memory of jotter!