It's been spread out, as happens in families with forks, and we've got one visit to go, but we made it through the holiday with all the trimmings.

I've been listening to seasonal music for a few weeks, to try to make sure that the winter doldrums and Grinch didn't set in. It mostly worked. I found Jimmy Fallon's Holiday Seasonings offered on Sirius SXM helpful, as he pulled in classics and obscure songs, and filled the gaps with stories I hadn't heard before. And he clued me in to a few things I didn't realize about songs I liked. The Spice Girls remade a song from the 1980s by The Waitresses, Christmas Wrapping; I didn't realize there were two versions until he called it out, and then I heard them at different times with new appreciation for both. Likewise, Madonna covered Ertha Kitt's song Santa Baby, the first cover since its release, and I only just realized I had been hearing both and didn't realize they were different until Fallon pointed it out.

I spent much of the week before wandering around stores looking for the toys and clothes and things to give to others as gifts. It was hard, even for the kids in our house, because the stores were filled with so much of the same stuff everyone already has or always gets. Because of other things, we didn't get to getting a tree until the Friday before Christmas, which the kids then got to decorate before everyone showed up the next morning. The wife spent a lot of the days before also shopping and prepping food for the gatherings to come.

On the Saturday before Christmas, we got together to do a little secret Santa thing. Our family isn't large, by many measures. We've got four kids, and two of them have two kids each, giving us four grandkids. We were able to gather with the ten of us for the first time since we had a big vacation this summer. The younger kids and grandkids all getting shuffled and swapping names, and then the adults (with varying degrees of help) shop and pay for it all. We also get some things for the grand kids and a couple things for the younger kids, so they're not left out. There are occasional bits or bobs that the adults will swap, too, but mostly we make it all about the kids. We leave the rest of household sharing for the households to do their way, either at their homes, or with other gatherings.

On Christmas Eve, every year, we head across the border to the wife's mom's house for a little gathering. Way back when, we used to go to her grandparents' house, but that hasn't been for a while. We used to not have to cross the border, as she lived on the other side of the city, but dozens of years ago she moved to Wisconsin. We joke that it was a term accepted when we were getting married, that a few holidays and birthdays are always at her mom's house. It's real that it happens, but it wasn't a real negotiation of the marriage. We get her mom a couple things, and she gets the younger kids some things, and we bring a couple more little things for the kids, too. We eat and jabber and hang out until the kids are just starting to lose their politeness, and we head home.

On Christmas morning, we have more stuff for the kids. A little less from Santa and more from us in the spirit of Santa. We used to try to jam a little family gifting on Christmas Eve, after getting home from grandma's house, but that has gotten to be a bit much, especially since we already give them things on a few occasions.

We've tapered down from extravagant piles of gifts to a few things that they'll like in varying degrees. They want things like PlayStations and iPhones, but we get things like card games and sweatshirts. The big hits were Rollerblades and Akedo Warriors. This was the first year we didn't give socks and underwear, a long, long running gift in our house.

Santa did bring me a new waffle maker, having worn ours out earlier this year. I was pretty excited to crack it open and make a pile of waffles, but there wasn't any hunger for them, so the box is still unopened. Maybe on the weekend, which is usually when we have the time, although we are on winter break from school, and retired from work, so time is pretty much on our side for a week or so.

We spent the yest of the day watching Christmas movies. I had started with the Bill Murray story, Scrooged, and had just gotten past the visit from the ghost of his old boss, but the wife didn't want to watch that. We started our marathon by watching Noelle, which is a bit of quirky fun as Anna Kendrick plays the naive daughter of Santa, who passes, and she has to try to find her brother so he can take the reins. We followed a suggestion to Jack Black's Dear Santa, an interesting twist on what might happen if one misspelled Santa on their Christmas wish letter, which had much better acting than the movies that followed. We watched (apparently one of the many movies with the title) Christmas Time, this one a British attempt at following a disbelieving and kind of anti-Christmas dad as he struggles through a botched family ski vacation and is introduced to some Christmas love; I'm not sure if it was flat because it was British or because everyone was turning a school play into a film, but it was a fine story with a bunch of forced and disconnected interactions. We ended our movie barrage with Ben Affleck forcing his idea of Christmas on a family in Surviving Christmas, which had all kinds of potential, but also was a better story than it turned out on film.

I had offered Spirited, the fun Will Farrel and Ryan Reynolds musical telling of a Christmas Carol from a couple years ago. I was also steered away from a recommendation for Anna and The Apocalypse, which is a zombie movie set during Christmas time that is pitched as a blend of Shaun of The Dead and La La Land, which is a hard combo to beat, right?

We have one more stop on our Christmas path to visit my mom, too.

Then we'll be done with Christmas, except for putting the decorations away and moving the tree to the alley for collection.