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It doesn't feel like the holidays without ...
I'm happy whenever I receive an assignment that puts me in my car during the noon to 4 p.m. time block, because I can listen to Damon Bruce on KNBR 1050. (@DamonBruce on Twitter.) He integrates popular culture into the show during segments like his daily Three-Play, where he asks the listeners to answer three loosely related questions -- at least one of which often has little or nothing to do with sports.
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There's no need to be afraid ...
That's the long way of telling you I didn't come up with the topic for today's post: What in your life is mandatory for holiday cheer?
My choices are below. Yours in the comments. You can pick what you want, but I'll be straying away from the obvious "getting the tree"/"going Christmas shopping" entries and heading straight for my most random Christmas necessities/traditions.
1. Hearing "Do They Know It's Christmas" on the radio: More specifically, listening to the line where U2's Bono lets out a hyper-melodramatic "well tonight thank God it's them, instead of youuuuuuuuu!" The combination of sincerity and camp, being sung by every musical artist I listened to when I was 13, is holiday perfection.
2. Reading about some drunk a**hole committing a crime dressed as Santa: It happens every year. Someone tries to rob a liquor store, assaults a cop, drives the wrong way down an interstate or exposes himself in a public library dressed as Santa Claus. It has reached a point where the holiday feels incomplete without Santa getting arrested. Every time Santa gets charged with a misdemeanor an angel gets his wings ...
3. Turning on the Yule Log: See yesterday's post.
4. The arrival of East Oakland's Clark Griswold: There's a dude living about eight houses down my street, who painted his craftsman home the brightest green that Home Depot can sell by law. Every year, he crams as many lights, glowing giant candy canes and reindeer as he can on his property -- all in orbit of an African-American Santa. His electricity bill must be $50 per day. My whole family always lets out a cheer the first day his house is lit up. Christmas doesn't start for me until East Oakland's Clark Griswold turns on the lights.
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This covers Nos. 2 and 5 on my list.
5. Watching "Die Hard" on Christmas Eve: I've written posts about this before. And I'll write posts about it again. "Die Hard" is the greatest Holiday movie of all time.
6. Driving down Picardy Lane with the kids: Picardy is our local candy cane lane -- a block of houses that collectively agrees to string lights so locals can drive by slowly and appreciate the Christmas spirit. I've always wondered what the block captains do to the people who refuse to hang lights. (Is there some kind of Star Chamber-style execution squad?) Whatever kind of tyrannical homeowners association politics are going on behind the scenes, it's worth it when I see the excitement in the eyes of my two boys.
7. Eating tamales and/or crab and/or carnitas: I was surprised, because someone who called Damon's show also listed tamales as mandatory for Christmas. My family, which is Mexican on my mother's side, generally consumes the food of our people on Christmas Day.
PETER HARTLAUB is the pop culture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and founder of this parenting blog, which admittedly sometimes has nothing to do with parenting. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/peterhartlaub.
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| December 16 2010 at 06:41 AM
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