Holiday Cards

I get at least two holiday cards every year. And I get no more than three holiday cards every year. I get one from my parents. Each year it has a picture of my kid, my niece, and my nephew. I get one from my friend, whom I wrote about in this post. That one…

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Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

We’ve Reached Post-a-Day December

December is here. Can you believe it? It feels like January was last week. That’s definitely one of the less fun parts of getting older. Oh well. December really is here. Trust me, I checked. For long time readers of this blog, you know what that means. It’s time for me to do a post…

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A Christmas Post (Sort Of)

It’s December 8th and I haven’t done a single Christmas post this year. In the past, holiday posts have been a staple of my Decembers. I’ve written a bunch of posts about Santa and a bunch of posts about holiday music. I’ve written a fair number of posts about Chanukah. I’ve written about the language…

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In the Spirit?

2021 has been a weird year and, so far, December has been especially weird. People who know me or read this blog regularly know I love the holidays. But, even though it’s December 11th and I’ve been posting every day in December, I’ve barely mentioned Christmas. It’s come up in three posts, but only incidentally….

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Sacred Steel for the Holidays by The Campbell Brothers

Many of you know that each year I do a holiday music binge starting the day after Thanksgiving and ending on Christmas day. It’s one of my favorite parts of December. This year, my favorite has been Sacred Steel for the Holidays by The Campbell Brothers. So, I wanted to share it with everyone. The…

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Merry Christmas

There are lots of things I like about Christmas, as anyone who reads these December posts can tell. One thing in particular is the greeting, “Merry Christmas.” It’s the only time that I can think of that we wish other people to be merry and I like merriment. We don’t usually wish people to be…

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Pie For Breakfast

Every year at Thanksgiving and Christmas, my mom makes an extra pumpkin pie for me to take home.  It’s one of my favorite things about the days after the holidays, just knowing that there’s a pie in the fridge.  And one of my favorite things about having that pie is I get to eat pie…

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The Twelve Gifts of Christmas

Every year, PNC calculates what they call the Christmas Price Index.  Basically it is the amount of money it would cost to buy all of the gifts in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas”.  This year, the total is $34,558.65.  That’s a 0.6% increase over last year.  If find the number interesting in a…

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Winter Songs

I always wonder why any song about or featuring winter becomes a Christmas song.  “Jingle Bells”, “Sleigh Ride” and “Winter Wonderland” have nothing to do with Christmas.  We should be just as happy listening to them in February as we are in December.  But we’re not, and I think that’s strange. Other holidays don’t co-opt…

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My Favorite Holiday Music

Today I’m really at a loss what to write about for my December 2017 daily post.  One thing about the holidays is they are more fun when we share things.  So, tonight I want to share one of my favorite pieces of holiday music.  It’s the album Woody Guthrie’s Happy Joyous Hanukkah* by The Klezmatics….

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