And how was your Christmas?

This year, I have to admit, unlike Winnie The Pooh, my tummy was rumbly for Christmas. Anticipating spending the holiday with family had me a bit on edge. My siblings and I seem to have a deep inner connection that we all feel but rarely speak about.

Background: Before our strong belief in Santa Claus was exchanged for "Oh it's Mom & Dad," before our parents divorced; before driving to all the "step" places, Christmas was the biggest blast ever. Every year, we woke up earlier and earlier. Until one year it became almost an hour after bedtime that the parental units shifted us back to our rooms and demanded we stay in slumberland...that is IF we could. And under NO circumstances were we to leave our rooms again!

The real holiday pressures came later from having to see new family we had no association with otherwise and for the most part had to fake liking. Sound familiar? I wish I had been fortunate enough to have been young enough to develop a relationship. Hard to do by dad's third wife/family. Mom only remarried once and there was little expectation of creating a family center since most of that step family lived elsewhere, thankfully. Not that they are bad people, they are not. It's just that odd way of "creating" new, heart-felt relationships when people like your parents remarry. Maybe it's different these days since so many people end marriages sooner. Is it? And of so, why marry? Just COMMIT without that piece of paper.

Aaaaaaanyway......Christmas was actually fantastic. For the most part, everybody said all the right things, made all the right comments and made a point to just have fun. We laughed and we never traipsed down memory lane, for that is where the trouble starts; the picking and poking and remembering not so pleasant memories. We did good. It was well deserved and we have finally made it on our own; that is made a Christmas for oursleves that our parents would have been proud of.

For this special Christmas cheer, my sister had the brilliant idea to watch on old (dated even) DVD of the Paul Lynde Halloween Special (1976). Remember him? Center Square on Hollywood Squares, Uncle Arthur on Bewitched, and lest we forget one of the many stars in Bye-Bye Birdie. How ta-acky! The show had a classic appearance of Margaret Hamilton and Billie Hayes (The Wicked Witch from Oz and Witchipoo from H.R. Pufnstuf, respectively). It was old but we were amused at the first TV appearance of KISS contained therein. It was TV at it's tackiest and it really tried to give us the best of Paul Lynde. It just didn't translate to 2008. The best items: 1. Paul's best jibes at KISS toward the end of the show. 2. The extras contains a great tell-all audio interview with Peter Marshall. Worth every bit of the $8 bucks.

Later we played Scene It, both the movie and TV versions. We knew just enough to make it a good match for all involved. Ahhh, family games at Christmas. After that a brief nap THEN off to the movies. We intended to see Benjamin Button (sold out) so we opted for totally different fare; The Spirit. Highly stylized Frank Miller movie take on the comic character. In vivid black, white and red and ocassional chest shots of he that is the Spirit. Yay for that but on the whole, not after Xmas lunch. Too sleeeeeepy for the virtual movie.