Christmas Meme

This is from Don't Try This At Home - if you've not visited this blog, YOU SHOULD. It's a definite winner. fridaynightgirl gives it 2 thumbs up (like anybody cares).

1. Egg nog or hot chocolate?
Hot Chocolate

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Santa is quite the showman because he sets the gifts out, all assembled and ready to be played with on Christmas morning.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
White. There is a house up the street that has red lights. They do kind of a Texas Christmas theme but, still y'all, it looks like a house of ill-repute. I laugh every time I go by it.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
yeppers. everybody needs more kissing. I think the world would be a nicer place if we all kissed more.

5. When do you put your decorations up?
It is a holiday tradition to start pulling boxes down after Thanksgiving lunch. We decorate the day after Thanksgiving. I have confessed, however, that we decorated early this year. That's not going to happen again, though... I promise.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)?
My mother's dressing. It's unlike any I've ever tasted. I could eat an entire meal of JUST dressing. Yum. Part of the fun of the dish is that we all stand around in the kitchen and make it together.

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child:
One year, Santa brought me a keyboard. It had some preset tunes on it. The volume was set all the way up and one of these tunes played on a loop until my brother and I woke up and staggered down the hall. Then, in a scene similar to 2001, we stood around this black monolith (keyboard) wondering 1. what it was (I told you we were just waking up) and 2. how to turn it OFF. *giggle* I can still hear that tune, 20 years later, in my head. Sometimes, when I go by a keyboard, I'll test out the presets just to see if I can find that tune again. I would SO buy it.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
What, that he doesn't wear that red coat the rest of the year? What are you talking about?

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
Yes, we open the family gifts on Christmas Eve, after church. Christmas Morning is all Santa's show.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree?
This year, I have enough family ornaments that I didn't have to put any of what I call the stock ornaments (glass balls). Our tree is something out of Country Sampler - decorated with ribbon, red berries (K, that's the best idea we've ever had!) and (mostly) homemade ornaments.

11. Snow! Love it or dread it?
Well, living in Central Texas, we don't see much snow EVER but the pictures are very nice. Now, I can't see myself living somewhere that I'd have to deal with accumulated snow - I have seen it after it's been there a while. Yuck.

12. Can you ice skate?
No. And I'm not at all bitter about it. *pout*

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
Well, even though the delivery wasn't until September of 2002, God gave us Munchkin on Christmas Eve, 2001. That was a pretty great gift.

14. What’s the most important thing about the holidays for you?
Celebrating the birth of Christ

15. What is your favorite holiday dessert?
chocolate pie

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
Lighting the Advent Wreath. Even though we attend a baptist church, it is such a wonderful way to keep the focus on Christ's birth throughout the season. We are going to do a Jesse Tree next year, I think.

17. What tops your tree?
An angel. She used to move her arms but she stopped doing that a few years ago. She still lights up, though, so we've kept her.

18. Which do you prefer, giving or receiving?
Oh definitely giving. The thrill of the hunt for that perfect gift is only surpassed by the joy of giving it and seeing the excitement over the gift.

19. What is your favorite Christmas song?
O Holy Night, O Come O Come Emmanuel, For Unto Us a Child is Born (Messiah), Santa Baby (Ertha Kitt singing), Silent Night... Should I continue? (I like Christmas music)

21. Favorite Christmas movie? Santa Claus is Coming to Town, A Christmas Movie (surprisingly enough, I never "got" this movie until I became a parent. Now, I roll around on the floor with laughter. I can so see putting on a jester hat to jeer at my kid "You'll shoot your eye out!" I'm kidding. Maybe.)

22. What do you leave for Santa? Cookies and Milk.