Phil asks if Christmas is for children. K Sera discusses her Christmas experience as a child, Micah talks about how he ruined it for his brother, and Phil has a plan for his Wii U.
Shownotes:
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K Sera's after thoughts:
- Baby-lizard-me was a born skeptic. I remember lying to my brother and younger cousins about Santa so as not to "spoil the magic" or whatever. When I called my folks earlier this evening to ask if they recall whenabouts I stopped believing in Santa, the first thing out of my dad’s mouth was, “Did you ever believe in things like that?” - so, there you have it. Nope.
My best winter and Christmas memories remain being up north, making snow forts and sledding with my cousins, playing cards with the family pinochle players, eating my grandmother’s cooking, and rolling my eyes when uncle Kevin would turn on the Christmas Story and have it playing ALL DAY. ON REPEAT.
A full house, surrounded by people who I love. That was the best part of the holidays.
- The worst part, in my recollection, was the gifting portion. Gift giving and receiving started out innocently enough for me. As a kid, it was always exciting to know there was something shiny and new just for me under that tree, building up my expectations, imagining all the cool things that might fit in a box this or that size… except, when I finally opened my gifts, I got punched in the gut by the disappointing reality. It was never as good as what I was hoping for, and yet I was expected to be grateful and gracious, and I was gracious, at least; but comparison is the thief of joy, and everyone else I knew got everything they wanted and more for Christmas (or their birthdays), and here I am with nice gifts, sure, but not the coolest, new game/toy/whatever that five and more of my closest friends had. My high expectations and crushing disappointments have been an ongoing learning curve in my life. Eventually, I learned to protect my fragile hopes with a high defensive wall of low-to-no expectations, surrounded by a deep protective moat of ‘let’s not care about what other people have or are doing’ with apathy-alligators ready and willing to eat up any left over fucks still floating around the edges. It took some time, but eventually I figured out that things are not happiness. Good people are happiness - at least, to me.
- I feel like I have a lot of emotional traumas around holiday gifting. I hate it. It makes me feel anxious and awful, because it feels like a game I can’t win. I could literally rant for ten paragraphs on this subject and how miserable it makes me feel, but… I think I’m going to leave it here. It’s enough that I’m worked up over this coming holiday season.
- On a completely different note: Phil eventually did drop off the Wii U so I could play Breath of the Wild. It really was an amazing game! So, thank you Phil, for sharing that with me!
Phil's after thoughts:
- The fact that BOTW 2 will come out before Advance Wars (for the Nintendo Switch) still bothers me.
- Also, the fun fact I forgot to mention about the coal: the Editor gave the same piece of coal THE NEXT YEAR. The long-range planning of this Editor is scary impressive, and also just SCARY.