Thessaly's Tooth

I’m done with Christmas shopping! Now need to wrap, finish the Christmas cards, and mail everything. I decided it was too rainy to walk the packages to the post office today. I can’t resist a perfectly good weather-based excuse like that.
This weekend we went to a “progressive dinner” with the church we’ve been attending. They asked me to bring 2 appetizers–I’ve never really made appetizers before, so didn’t really know what to make. I finally decided to make a pizza dip from Andy’s mom’s recipe, and a pretzel dip made with cranberry sauce, ginger, and mustard which sounded interesting. However, I didn’t think the pretzel dip recipe would make enough so I decided to double it, with the result that we now have about a year’s supply of pretzel dip. It’s tasty, but not that tasty.

Over Thanksgiving, while my parents were visiting, I discovered the all-Christmas-music station here in GR. I think I need to stop listening to it for a while, because I’ve started thinking about the songs a little too much, and a lot of them don’t really stand up to much analysis. For example, there are a few songs that I have no idea why they play at all, such as John Lennon’s So This is Christmas. “So this is Christmas, and what have you done; another year older, and a new one just begun.” That just doesn’t say Merry Christmas to me. It makes me feel old and depressed.
I have quite a high tolerance for Christmas music, no matter how sappy or overplayed. I secretly love “Sleigh Ride,” even dopey Lawrence Welk-like vocal versions, though the Boston Pops instrumental one is my favorite. I even like that Paul McCartney “simply having a wonderful Christmas” one. There are a couple that I really don’t like, though. For example, “Someday At Christmas.” I appreciate the general idea, but it’s a little too sanctimonious for me. And today I finally heard a song that was far too sappy even for me, it ended like this: “Christmas is sleigh bells, Christmas is sharing, Christmas is holly, Christmas is caring, Christmas is holly.” I guess they really wanted us to remember about the holly.
A perennial Christmas mystery for me is why certain songs are played only at Christmas, though they have nothing to do with the holiday. For example: Frosty the Snowman, Sleigh Ride, Winter Wonderland, Baby It’s Cold Outside (I actually never associated that one with Christmas before, but they played it on the Christmas station so it must be), and other winter-themed ones.
My parents have an annual tradition of counting the number of times they hear “Little Drummer Boy.” They some years are very Drummer Boy-heavy, while others have a Drummer Boy dearth. I think this is going to be a big year for the Drummer Boy; we counted three or four L.D.B’s just while they were here visiting (plus one mistaken hearing–I always mix up LDB and Do You Hear What I Hear, for some reason).