2.Swap and shop.Track down the perfect gift for the most difficult person on a friend's list;let her do the same for you.Quiz each other on the tough one's habits,needs and desires.The shift in perspective(and the release from emotional history)can be freeing,funny,enlightening.
3.Organize at least one of the following: a Secret Santa exchange in your office,a cookie swap in your condo,a latke party with your friends .
4.Call in sick to an obligatory party;stay home in bed and listen to Willie Nelson's "Blue Christmas".
5.Throw a North Polaroid party.Snap arriving guests with an instant camera.Tie a ribbow to the top of each photo to create instant ornaments.Serve baked Alaska.
7.Deal with the dough issue(part1).Give compliments instead of presents.Gather friends for a dinner at which each friend lists what's most admirable and endearing about the others.
9.Deal with the other dough issue: Make cookies-from scratch(rolling pin,cookie cutters and all) if you're so inclined.Or, if you're not, make the supermarket slice-and-bake kind.Eat'em while they're hot.
10.When you donate to your office or community toy drive,give the best,the hippest,the most imaginative loot-what the kids in your life would want,top of the line,nothing offbrand or cast-off.Giving good means feeling good.
11.If your family generates friction year-round,there won't be a moratorium on tension at the first sign of mistletoe or menorah.But some preemptive planning can smooth the path.Try this:Rent "It's a wonderful Life", "Miracle on 34th Street", "Christmas in Connecticut" or "Scrooge".Sneak in some home movies.serve TV-watching snacks.Banish bickering through video!
13.Get in the spirit with a good read.Consider O.Henry's "The Gift of theMagi" or Isaac Bashevis Singer's "The Power of Light" for inspiration; David Sedaris' "The Santaland Diaries" for laughs.
14.Sit at the kids' table: When family or friends gather,volunteer to baby-sit while the other adults assemble peaceably or do chores.
15.Rally your friends to volunteer as a group. Usher them en masse to a nursing home,shelter or soup kitchen;afterward feed them a fat, festive feast.Camaraderie enhances do-goodery.
16.Take a midnight stroll with your current love interest past holiday window displays,long after the crowds have thinned.
18.Sing something: The Messiah, "Feliz Navidad", "Barbie Girl"- whatever. And don't limit yourself to singing the song just once.Sing till you're hoarse and jubilant and elated.
19.Abide by the Sanity Clause:Pick the holiday chore you most dread and stop doing it.(Send the fewest cards possible- or none at all.Drop shopping; give gift certificates.) When the world doesn't come to end, celebrate.
20.Have a Silent Night. Invite a few friends over for a silent meal:absolutely no talking from arrival to dessert. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be astonished at the deep, warm, odd,wonderful feelings that well up to fill the quiet.
22.Don't open one of your present's. Put it away for a dark, cold, gloomy day in late February.
23.If you're hopelessly behind with holiday cards, send everyone on your list a valentine by mid-January. You'll be charmingly ahead.
24.On the last day of the year, write down the happiest events of the previous 364 days.
Dedicate December 31 to a triumphantly strenuous activity - a
hike, a bike trip, a climb, a paddle. Eat ravenously, lift a glass with deliciously
sore muscles and fall happily, gratefully into bed long before midnight!! :o)
There's a special day it comes but ones a year
It's very merry with Yule tide cheer
It brings presents, snow and Eskimo
Oh, don't you know it's a Christmas time again..
It's time for family, and all your closest friends
Host never want Christmas time to ever end
Oh,don't you know it's Christmas time again..
Halls are busy shoppers every were
Lights on houses blinking over here and there.
Oh, don't you know it's Christmas time again.
White snow sparkles, it sparkles every where
People sing Christmas carols, you hear them fill the air
Oh, don't you know it's Christmas time again..
Children sit on Santa knee while they plead for what they want
Stocking hung above the fire place,Cookies set down below
Oh, don't you know it's Christmas time again...!
It's Christmas time and ones again
The world repeats the story
Of peace on the Earth, good will to men,
And children sing the glory
Of angels and a shining star
And of a baby's natal day
So many years ago..
What you can see is smallest part;
You don't need Christmas in your hands
When you have Christmas in your heart..!
--The elf-abet..:o)
