Christmas 2023

 

What a great, relaxing day!

 

This was a weird Christmas, no? with Christmas Eve falling on Sunday and Christmas Day on Monday. For Chez Hopper down in North Texas, shopping and preparations ended on Saturday, with last-minute stocking stuffers, scotch tape, and sticker labels being purchased. After a quick dinner of salads the girls watched a Hallmark movie while I swept up dog hair, cleaned the dishes in the kitchen, then settled in to finish Heinlein’s Starship Troopers.

 

We attended midnight mass on Sunday sans Patch, who was fighting (and ultimately overcame) a congestive cold. The Christmas celebration was warm, friendly, and I enjoyed the singing and the sermon. Our pastor carried the baby Jesus statuette up above his head during the introductory procession, something I love. A free book was handed out to parishioners, This Is My Body, by Bishop Robert Barron. I have minor problems with Barron, but I do plan on reading the book in January. We got home, exhausted, around 1:30 a.m. Little One went to bed immediately while the Mrs. and I stayed up filling stockings and arranging gifts under the tree.

 

For the second year in a row I was the first one up, at 9:15. Still strange to wake up to a quiet house on Christmas morning after a dozen years of frantic screaming children knocking down our door at dawn to open presents. Eventually everyone rose and we began a long, slow process of opening presents that ended sometime after noon. We had my mother-in-law’s Polish coffee cake for lunch and spent the remainder of the day lazing around. More Hallmark movies, some football and hockey games, some charcuterie board snacking, some flowing wine. I took the dog out for a drive while the Mrs. prepared a delicious Christmas dinner of Beef Wellington, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. She bought us all individualized desserts; mine was a cheesecake but my belly was too full to enjoy it; that awaits me tonight.

 

I did pretty well in the gift-giving department. By nature I am an awful gift-giver. I put too much pressure on myself, am too inattentive to the signals my loved ones send out, and have no interest in their interests (mostly fashion and makeup at this stage). Last year I overcame a lot of this and took notes during the summer and fall and managed to give something to each of my family members she loved. This year … kinda the same, but not as much back-patting as I felt in 2022. I didn’t hit a home run, but I did get on base with a ground-rule double.

 

So what did I give? Well, by agreement, the Mrs. and I decided to not go overboard on each other (especially since we celebrated the 25th anniversary of our first date with dinner out three days earlier). I picked out for her a management decision workbook she hinted at, some Dallas Stars squishy socks, and two bottles of margherita mix, peach and pomegranate. Patch got a stuffed Pusheen, a ramen bowl, and the paperback Magic, by William Goldman. This is the book the 1978 Anthony Hopkins-psychotic ventriloquist dummy movie was based on, which I watched with Patch on Halloween. She’s fascinated with the macabre tale from a psychological angle. For Little One, who’s traveling to Italy for the entirety of the spring semester, I bought a couple of non-traditional travel books, an Italian phrasebook, and some laminated cards on wines, cheeses of Italy, and, of course, a travel prayer card.

 

How’d Hopper do? Pretty darn good, as always. The Mrs. bought me a few books on the Alamo – a visit there’s on our bucket list in 2024, and will get a few posts of its own down the road. She also gifted me some upgraded sneakers for my walks. Patch bought me two records – Brahms's Symphony No. 4 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 “Pathetique”, bringing my collection total up to 32 albums. Little One bought me a book on the Founding Fathers and another on Andrew Jackson. All this non-fiction will be read in January and February of the new year. And both girls made funny and tender Christmas cards for their old dad, which he’ll keep forever.

 

I took today and Friday off from my job, so only a two-day workweek for me. A lot of reading and relaxation in store today. And a lot of leftover Beef Wellington. After that another four-day weekend and then, 2024.

 

Merry Christmas all! 

Hope Santa was as good to you as he was to me!