Grocery Lists and Christmas Songs

When my husband gets into the Christmas spirit and decides it’s time to decorate the house with colorful shiny things, I leave the house. This usually happens right after Thanksgiving. It’s not that I’m a scrooge but I don’t like the clutter and chaos. I also don’t want the Christmas music playing too early. I can enjoy it all for a few weeks, however, the day after Christmas I am ready to clean up. In Spain the Christmas season is even longer because you have to wait for the kings to come on January 6th.  Way too long for me, but I survived for many years.

The other day my son heard a Christmas song on the radio and he said, “Hey, I just heard that one yesterday.”I used that moment to explain why I don’t like to listen to Christmas music so early because there are only so many Christmas songs, and you have to hear them over and over and over. I think my son finally understood me. My daughter and husband will never understand.

Doesn’t anyone else get tired of the same 50 songs all month long? Of course there is variety in that you can hear 30 different artists spanning decades singing the same lyrics. I know it is exciting to hear both Bing Crosby and Gloria Estefan singing about sleigh bells in the snow.

Now the song “Winter Wonderland” preplexed me for many years. You know the line “In the meadow you can build a snowman, and pretend that he is Parson Brown.” I thought it was “parse and brown”. I thought saying parse and brown was a like saying he was tan and human-like. I couldn’t figure out why the snowman would care if we were married and who is “we” anyway?

I have to admit my favorite songs are the ones sung by these rockers that really can’t sing. They do a great job yelling out “I’m a rocker” and “I hate your mama” or whatever they normally sing, but give them one of these Christmas songs with a mellow melody and it’s painful to hear.

Speaking of Christmas songs, did you know that you can go to a website and read other people’s grocery lists? Now, why would anyone want to do that? So why did I actually go to that website? I enjoy baking and cooking. I hate planning what we are going to eat for the week, and making the lists. I guess I thought I could just borrow someone else’s list and follow it and maybe it would lend itself to a week of meals. It didn’t work. I ended up with a list with vodka, pasta and dish soap. My husband didn’t like the vodka with pasta or the pasta with dish soap. So the moral of the story is, that you can’t steal someone else’s grocery list, and you can’t sing about Parson Brown without confusing the kids.