The other night I was talking to my sister about all the great Christmas movies we used to watch when we were kids, like One Magic Christmas starring Mary Steenburgen. And then my friends over at the PBS Booklights blog mentioned The Lump of Coal by Lemony Snicket, a short story I read and loved a few years ago. So that got me thinking about some of my favorite holiday stories from years gone by.

You really can't go wrong with a classic, and you can't be any more classic the poem by Clement Clarke Moore "A Visit from St. Nicholas." It has been re-told everywhich way, from Tim Burton's ghoulish masterpiece to the Cajun version I was interoduced to while living in Louisiana years ago. But it is the version of the poem I had as a child that stands out in my mind more than any other.

When I was really little, we had this pop-up version of The Night before Christmas illustrated by Michael Hague. Because it was the only pop-up book we had, it would get read all year long. We read it so often I had it memorized from the time I was about four, and to this day I can still say the poem verbatim.

As mentioned above, I am a sucker for family Christmas movies. I cried like a baby the first time I saw The Family Stone on a plane trip from Salt Lake to New York, and nothing gets me laughing like While You Were Sleeping. But my very favorite Christmas movie isn't really a Christmas movie at all.

When I sit down to watch Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis, I know it's Christmas. Because I have missed a few Christmases with my family, the song Esther sings to her little sister Tootie about Christmas being more about who you have loved than where you are has a special meaning to me.

One of my best memories from high school is the Christmas play I was in. It was a modern retelling of A Christmas Carol in which Scrooge was a self-centered rock star bent on driving himself to an early, lonely grave complete with the dreadlock-sporting ghost of Bob Marley and a tofu turkey for the hippy Cratchits. I really wish I could remember the name of the play, but it was too long ago and I can't find it in my old journals either. Oh well.

I didn't have a big part, but I did have this really dramatic fainting scene at the beginning when the kid who was supposed to catch me wasn't paying attention and I hit my head on the stage. I don't blame him, really. I tend to fall and hit my head a lot--I've even knocked myself out a couple of times. But getting back to the topic at hand...

I LOVE Christmas music. Seriously, I have about 12 hours worth of Christmas music on my iPod. Everything from the King Singers to Fall Out Boy. And all of that music tells a different story of Christmas, whether it's a depressing story of love lost and loneliness, or a song totally focused of the miracle of a baby born in a stable.

To me, one of the most beautiful hymns of the season is It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. That song encompasses everything meaningful about the season. It speaks of tradition and peace, past and present, hope and fulfillment. The imagery is also so moving: "Still thru the cloven skies they come / With peaceful wings unfurled."

There is something so distinct about the stories written about Christmas. This is the time of year when everyone suspends their disbelief for just a moment and believes that magic and miracles and goodness really does exist in the world. We stretch our imagination and make ourselves a little vulnerable to feeling the spirit of Christmas, no matter if we believe in Christ or not.

And new stories of Christmas are still being created every year. Snowmen at Night by Mark and Caralyn Buehner is the perfect example of this.

What are some of your favorite Christmas stories? Are they books or songs or maybe even memories? Maybe it's a story a parent read to you or something you discovered one Christmas when you were far from home. But in this season of glad tides, I hope you are able to find joy and happiness in all your Christmas stories.

 1. I've bee thinking a lot about time again. As many of you who regularly read my blog (or talk to me when I'm in an existential mood) know, this is a topic that intrigues me. I am not a true chronomaniac as I am not obsessed with schedules and time management, and I am kind of the opposite of a chronocentric as I believe that you have to judge people based on their own time and not the time in which you are most accustomed, and I am definitely not a chronomancer as I believe that your fate is created by the actions you take and not what time you take those actions. So my question is, what is it called when someone is obsessed with how time flows and how the past, present and future interact with each other? With how many sci-fi books on time travel there are out there and how many time theories there are in physics, I can't imagine there isn't a term for someone like me. And this all started thanks to a decades costume party I'm going to tomorrow night.

 

2. I can't seem to make myself sit down and read a book, write a review, work on a manuscript or do anything else at the moment. It is all I can do to make myself post on my blog. I think it's because I changed jobs at work and now spend more of my day reading newspapers, editing editorial submissions and writing media responses. I think I'm kind of burned out at the moment. Hopefully going to Chicago for Labor Day will help pull me out of my funk.

 

3. I have finally finished unpacking. After more than a month in my new place, I unpacked my last box this week. As this is just a temporary place, I'll have to pack and unpack everything again in January. I don't know if I'm looking forward to that or dreading it.

 

4. I also organized my bookshelves this week. When I realized I had far to many books to fit, I took about 25 books to the library donation books. While I always deal with a bit of separation anxiety when I give away books, I know the books will go to a good cause--supporting my local library. I also feel a bit liberated by the fact I gave away a bunch of books I have owned for years and will probably never read. Those books haunt my bookshelf. There are so many good books out there and not enough time to read them all, so I need to be a little more selective in my reading choice. Okay, if I was really reading at the moment I would need to be more selective in my reading choice. Right now I just need to chose something--anything--to read.

 

5. I've been feeling nostalgic for 80's sci-fi movies this week like The Boy Who Could Fly, Flight of the Navigator and Space Camp. I often get in the mood to watch these movies, so I'm thinking I need to start buying some of these classics. I also just realized all of these movies were released in 1986--I wonder if there is any significance there.

 

 I've been researching today. I have this one part in my book where a neighbor comes by with his new car and I realized I know nothing about current cars let alone antique cars. Why oh why did I put this scene in my book? So I've spent the last two hours researching old cars and what makes them different and how often people would see them and on and on. I just pry I got it all right. Luckily I know someone who restores classic cars and will be able to tell me if I have the details right. And for an hour before that I was researching the Boswell Sisters, a trio that came out of New Orleans in the 1920s.

                      

I went and saw Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist last Friday and LOVED IT! I am kind of obsessed with that book, so I wasn't expecting much from the movie; in fact, I was kind of expecting to think they ruined it. But then I was watching an MTV special about it and saw and interview with David Levithan, one of the coauthors, and found out how pleased he and Rachel Cohn were with the movie (and he actually meant it, it wasn't just some PR spiel). I figured I could give it a try and love it too. And boy did I love it. Have I mentioned how much I loved this movie? Because, really, I think I am almost as in love with this movie as I was with the book. Hooray for making a movie about teenagers that doesn't feel like a formulaic movie about teenagers.

Okay, back to the grindstone with me. I have so much more research and writing to do before the night is over. I am going to get this novel finished before the month is out if it kills me.

I think I was one of the like five people who loved this movie. It has been hit hard by critics and viewers alike this summer, but what can I say? I'm a total sucker for cartoon nostalgia.



The feel of the movie kind of reminded me of Joe v. the Volcano. With that show, you have to totally suspend your believe and remind yourself that you are watching a fairy-tale. With Speed Racer, you have to remind yourself that you are watching a 70's cartoon. And the color--wow--it was eye-candy like Pushing Daisies.



Why you would go to this movie and not expect a live-action/CGI version of the cartoon, I will never know. The commercials and previews didn't try to hide the fact that this movie markets to 15-year-old gamers. I guess that is really what this all boils down to--I really have the mentality of a teenage boy when it comes to movies.

This weekend I got an early start on my summer reading and movies.

I saw Prince Caspian and thought it was good but not stellar like the first movie. While I would have thought the plot of the second book would have translated to film much easier than the first movie, the second movie did not follow the book as closely. There were a bunch of battle scenes and even a love story that were defiantly not in the book, but there was a lot of smart humor and amazing acting. Overall, it was worth going to see but I'm hoping it won't be the best movie of the summer.

In just two days, I finished reading all 619 pages of Stephenie Meyer's The Host. It was a good read, but the epilogue went on WAY too long and I'm getting kind of tired of Meyer's flight-more-than-fight heroines. But it is a well-written science fiction novel for girls, and you don't see that too often. The best part was that I got to go to Meyer's Salt Lake City signing. The King's English did a fantastic job with the event, and Meyer's answered a lot of questions about her books. I wish I had pictures, but I forgot to download them from my mom's camera before she left for Chicago. Oh well, maybe I'll post them another time.

But the best part of the weekend was going to the Scholastic Book Warehouse Sale. I got the most amazing books at such a good price. I love going to this and buying books that I know a lot of people will get to enjoy. Plus I dragged my mom along with me and convinced her to buy her first Mo Willem's book, Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late. I can't wait for next weekend to go visit friends in Boise for the holiday so I can read their kids more Mo!