Please enjoy this classic holiday post, first published seven years ago and no less relevant today than in years past:
How to Throw a (Christmas) Party
My tree-trimming party is due to start in six hours. I am exhausted, but the state of the Burrow suggests I ought not to be.
Here’s roughly how we got to where we are:
1. Set the date of the party sufficiently in advance. (Mine has been the second Sunday after Thanksgiving since I started throwing them for my college interns and my friends the year after I graduated college myself. Twenty-five years is considered sufficient.)
2. Invite guests early enough so that can fit your event into a busy holiday season. If you have essentially reserved a date for yourself for two decades, this can be slightly closer to the event … such as when repeat guests start asking when the invitation is going to arrive.
3. Begin to clean your home. Depending how often this occurs at other times of the year, it may be necessary to place this higher in your timeline. In my case, I ought to have started the day after my last party.
4. Procrastinate. Allow sufficient time for this. Consider starting a large and detailed and difficult-to-relocate project right in your main party space. You work better under a deadline, after all.
5. Clean some more in a haphazard fashion. Preferably stop one project partway through and leave it behind as if Mr. Clean has been swept through your living space by a hurricane.
6. Take a nap. Make some food. You need to keep up your strength after all.
7. Tackle a small part of the paper you ought to recycle the night before the final recycling is picked up before your party. By small, I mean a handful of envelopes. By night before, I mean 4 a.m.
8. Start to hit a frenzy. Of course you’ll get this all done! There’s plenty of time. By that, I mean two days. Almost.
9. Buy party supplies. In my case, this involves a tree, food, drinks, and paper products. Why does this grocery store not carry half the things you want? Are three bags of chips enough? Where, for the love of all things merry, is the vegan eggnog?!
10. Despair. Is it too late to uninvite all the guests 16 hours before the party is due to start? Or maybe just turn out all the lights and pretend not to be home?
11. Prioritize. A clean bathroom and a clean kitchen are important. People are willing to overlook dust, but they like a clean sink; remember, though, you can still lock yourself in the bathroom to do a spot clean after the first guests arrive.
12. Why have you never noticed all the cat fur and cat litter tracked all over the place? Oh, no, wait. You totally have. You just opted to overlook it.
13. Eat chocolate and drink tea. This will keep your mind off the fact that you have not left yourself enough time to sleep.
14. Stop to write a blog post. Because we all know that helps.
15. Tackle the biggest non-loud projects in the middle of the night. Then you can pretend your tears are from the strain, rather than the knowledge that you will not finish in time.
16. Get some sleep. Two hours is a nice amount for a long day ahead. You wouldn’t want to get groggy.
17. Calculate the time the stores open that sell the things you forgot or couldn’t find. Arrive as they unlock their doors.
18. Give up on prioritizing. Now you are just going to work on moving/hiding/minimizing the mess. Lacking a bedroom door and extensive closet space makes this a challenge.
19. Chuck papers into bags. Make sure you note which bag contains the important/recent papers because inevitably you will need it tomorrow. This stage is not unlike moving apartments, at least for me.
20. Pile everything on your bed.
21. Try to vacuum before your guests arrive. (This will not always happen.)
22. Try to be done cooking before your guests arrive. (This will rarely happen.)
23. Assume that any guest that arrives promptly at the time you’ve said your party begins is interested in helping you clean and cook. Otherwise, why would they be there already?
24. Have an absolutely wonderful time with your guests during your party. These people are your friends and they really don’t care if you forgot to get rid of those cobwebs you just noticed in a dark corner or if they have to eat home-cooked chili out of a chipped bowl … or a (clean) reused takeaway container.
25. After your last guest has left, collapse on your couch and admire your lovely clean party space. Because you’re never going to bed with all that crap on it.
(See you tomorrow sometime on the other side of 24.)
You, too, could share some of your holiday traditions. Sign up for a Virtual Advent Tour slot here.
Because I have a holiday party to prep for on Sunday, this weekend I’m resurrecting/updating a couple classic posts from the Virtual Advent Tour over the years.
I first published a version of this post in 2010:
Christmas music is as intrinsic a part of my holiday season as is a tree or presents. Each year my family looks to see who has new holiday albums coming out and breaks out the old favorites from years past. Each of us has a pretty sizable collection of Christmas albums crossing genre and spanning a variety of delivery formats from LP to 8-track to mp3.
My dad used to make an annual Christmas mix. He made a few Christmas tapes when I was growing up, but making it a yearly event definitely became much more feasible once you could build your playlist on the computer and then burn it to disc. Each year you eagerly look forward to seeing what he’s included on his holiday cd.
After making a few gift tapes myself back in college, I found the process to be a lot of work and stopped making mixes. But the allure remained and, after mulling it over for a couple of seasons, I resumed making mixes about a dozen years back. It’s a surprisingly involved process if you’re like me and prone to getting a bit obsessive about getting your mix just so. But I thought today, in honor of being a stop on the Virtual Advent Tour, that I could offer some insights into creating a Christmas mix that you and your loved ones will enjoy for years to come:
Start with a wide selection of music. It helps to have a collection of cds, records, or mp3s from which to draw. It is not imperative, however, as you can find plenty of holiday tunes online from which to draw. Clearly, free options are your friend, particularly if you’re starting from scratch.
Begin early. Prep now for next year. Just create a playlist labeled Christmas 2022 in your preferred music playing program and dump songs you like there. Consider this your vault. It’s not too late to create one for this year, but if you want one done by Dec. 25th, don’t wait!
Song selection is key. Here are my rules. Obviously yours will vary by taste and inclination:
I like to keep it pretty even between male and female singers. That’s a personal preference because I definitely notice when a mix slants one direction or another. (Although, usually I find that if there’s a noticeable bias it tends to be toward the mix creator including a mostly male line-up.)
Shorter songs are preferable. Aim for roughly three and a half minutes per song. Older songs are usually shorter; more modern ones tend toward the five-plus minute mark. I’m not saying to exclude long songs, although I try to keep those to a minimum. Christmas songs tend to get a bit repetitive and the longer one goes on, the easier it is to get tired of it. Plus, if you choose to burn your mix as a cd and you pick long songs, you get to include fewer songs.
Include some artists you love even outside Christmas. You might decide only to include artists you listen to year-round, but I tend also to add artists I’m not familiar with who have songs I find very catchy.
Find a balance between modern and traditional holiday music. By traditional I’m referring to songs everyone can sing along to. Marvin Gaye’s “Purple Snowflakes” is a song you can groove along to, but it’s not one that’s likely to get a carload of people singing along with it on first listen. But those unique tracks tend to be ones that people remember because, honestly, nearly every singer with a Christmas album has done a version of “Silent Night.” (I also like to throw in an instrumental or two. If your audience’s attention has wandered, a lack of vocals can help recall it to your mix.)
Once you’ve assembled a collection of songs you like, it’s time to start playing with them. First, know your target number. If you’re putting this mix on a cd, you have 79 minutes to play with. If you’ve picked mostly longer songs, that’s probably 15 tracks. If you’ve gone with shorter pieces, you could get 20 or more songs on the cd. But it’s good to check this number regularly because there’s nothing worse than putting together a mix you love only to find that the last five songs aren’t going to fit on.
I find it’s important to get your first and last songs right. The first song needs to draw your audience in, so I like an upbeat song to get you started. And the final song is that last taste you’re leaving people with. I like something a bit quieter here to send your listener out on a peaceful note. “Silent Night” would be a good choice here or “O Holy Night.”
In between those I try to alternate every couple of songs, upbeat for a couple, then slow for one or two. Listen to your mix several times. If you find you’ve stopped hearing it or you get bored, move your songs around to create better transitions or bump the song that bored you. Sometimes a song sounds perfect by itself but just refuses to play nicely with any of its neighboring tunes.
Finally, don’t forget to come up with a catchy title for your mix and artwork for it if you’re making cds.
And, as with any holiday endeavor, try to remember you’re doing this because it’s fun and you like Christmas music. If it becomes too much of a hassle, by all means stop. There’s nothing wrong with just putting albums on the stereo or computer or listening to an all-Christmas radio station. This way gives you a unique and special holiday mix, but it’s definitely less important than spending time with your loved ones. And there’s always next year.
There are still 20 days left of the Virtual Advent Tour. We’d love to have you join us. Signups are here.
Category: christmas/holiday season. There is/are Comments Off on virtual advent tour 2021: day 4.
Welcome back for the third day of the Virtual Advent Tour!
Over the years, I’ve shared some of the recipes I associate with the holidays. Often, they date back through the generations. Today, I’m going to share one that my mom found this year and that we tried at Thanksgiving. It was so tasty, I expect it to become a modern family classic.
Unroll a sheet of puff pastry onto a cutting board and cut into nine pieces (thirds vertically and horizontally).
Take each piece of puff pastry and tuck it into a mini muffin pan. (I don’t have a mini muffin pan, so will be trying this with a regular muffin pan this weekend.)
Cut the brie into 1″ pieces. (Freezing the brie for 15 minutes beforehand may make this easier, but I can almost guarantee I will never remember to do that.) Put one piece onto each puff pastry rectangle.
Put a spoonful of cranberry sauce onto each piece of brie. We used my mom’s homemade sauce, which has a thick consistency, but the recipe says you can used canned, too. If you want to mix it up, I imagine any thicker jam would work similarly. I bet cherry would be delicious, too.
Repeat with the second sheet of puff pastry.
If you’re using the mini muffin pan, we found we had to pinch the tops of the dough closed in order to get all 18 pieces to not overlap.
Bake for 15 minutes.
Serve as soon as they’ve cooled enough not to burn your mouth or at room temperature. We were able to store them in the fridge overnight and reheat them slightly in the taoster oven the next day.
If you’re enjoying the Virtual Advent Tour, please consider joining us by signing up to post over the next three weeks.
Welcome back to the second day of the 2021 Virtual Advent Tour. Today’s host is Bridget at The Ravell’d Sleave. Head over to her blog sometime today to check out her post!
And do consider signing up to write a post or two this month. We’d love to have you join our merry band of elf bloggers.
Thanks for joining us once again for 2021’s version of the Virtual Advent Tour, a tradition that dates back nearly fifteen years.
Today I want to start us off with a Christmas movie review.
Like many people, my family has a long, well-established love affair with Christmas films. We watch the classics every year, as well as movies that are classics to us, digging out VHS tapes recorded in the 1980s of children saving Santa or his reindeer or PIs searching out long-missing grandchildren to reunite with their feisty millionaire grandma.
Last weekend, while up in Connecticut, we streamed a couple films that I could see making future years’ rotations. The first is A Castle for Christmas, which you can find on Netflix.
Starring Brooke Shields and Carey Elwes, the rom-com focuses on best-selling American novelist Sophie Brown (played by Shields). In the wake of her divorce, Sophie has killed off her protagonist’s love interest in an unpopular move with her fans and followed it up with a meltdown on a talk show. To escape the bad publicity and the loneliness of the holidays, she does what any of us would do and books herself a holiday to the tiny Scottish town where her father grew up, hoping to get started on her next book in peace.
We are immediately introduced to a roguish handyman, played by Elwes, who, it turns out is Miles Dunbar, a duke and the nearly broke owner of the local castle. In addition to the tours they’ve been doing and a dusty gift shop, they’ve been forced to start booking events in the hopes of making ends meet, but he’s struggling to keep the bank at bay.
Sophie immediately falls in love with the castle and puts in an offer to buy it. It’s not fully clear how she knows to do this, but perhaps this is the sort of gossip you pick up in the local pub. Miles is resistant, but eventually agrees, with the caveat that she has to move into the castle for 30 days and will forfeit her deposit if she decides to leave. He tells his valet and BFF that once he chases her off (with the coldest, most dilapidated bedroom and a chilly demeanor), they’ll be able to use that money to stay afloat.
But what if his plans don’t work out quite as expected?
Shields and Elwes have good chemistry on screen and seem to enjoy each other’s company. The cast of mostly Scottish actors in the secondary roles are charismatic and endearing and help to draw attention away from Elwes’ over-the-top accent.
The script is a little light, being too eager to jump past the enemies stage and into the romance. So what could have been legitimate impediments to Sophie’s impetuous decision (how does a New Yorker keep a castle from continuing to crumble into disrepair or care for an entire village, particularly if the current duke/handyman has departed?) are easily brushed aside in favor of roaring fires and horse rides in the snow in pursuit of the perfect Christmas tree. But the characters are all so good-hearted and earnest and there are enough moments of humor sprinkled in that you’re eager to overlook that and get back to enjoying it.
The Scottish scenery cements the deal, with sweeping views of a wooded countryside, a quaint village with a cozy pub, and the titular castle. If you had millions of dollars, you’d relocate there too.
If you’ve got access to Netflix, I’d suggest checking it out.
Stop back tomorrow for Day 2 of the Virtual Advent Tour. If you’d like to join our merry band of posters, please sign up here.
Category: christmas/holiday season. There is/are Comments Off on virtual advent tour 2021: day 1.
Welcome to signups for this year’s Virtual Advent Tour. 2021 marks my seventh year as host of this annual event.
2020 was hard. I mean really hard. And I say that having been extraordinarily lucky. But I think all of us expected this year to be easier. And it … was. But, also, it wasn’t.
And yet, here we are again, less than a month away from Christmas and just over a month until year’s end. Some of us are celebrating with loved ones we couldn’t see last year. Some of us are trying to find ways to navigate through the holidays with holes in our closest circles — and in our hearts. And some built new traditions out of necessity last year and are sticking with them.
However you observe the holidays this year, I’d love for you to share your celebrations with us as part of this year’s Virtual Advent Tour.
As you likely know, a typical Advent calendar is usually a paper-based, time-marking device designed to count down from December 1st until Christmas. Each day, you open a door to unveil a treat of some kind — a hidden scene, piece of chocolate, or some other delight. The Virtual Advent Tour is a bloggers’ take on that. In our version, each morning I’ll point you to a post at someone’s blog in which they share something about their holiday season.
Would you be willing to share a holiday post or two in December? You’d know the date(s) ahead of time (and can request a specific one if you’d like). And you don’t have to decide ahead of time what you want to write about. Your post can be as simple or as complex and in text, video, or audio format.
If you’re looking for inspiration, folks have shared new traditions they’ve adopted, old traditions they keep alive, favorite holiday music, charities, recipes, books, events, memories, and more.
If this sounds fun and you’d like to participate, please leave me a comment on this post telling me what date(s) you’d like. I’ll update this post as people claim days.
A few annual housekeeping notes:
While both the tradition of the Advent calendar and the timing skew Christian, the tour is inclusive and open to anyone who celebrates December holidays of any sort. We love reading about all kinds of celebrations and the traditions you’ve developed around them!
I tend to write my posts shortly after midnight my time (Eastern U.S.) and will schedule them to go live at 6 a.m. If your post is live when I’m writing, I’ll give a little preview and link directly to it. However, if it’s not, no worries. I’ll assume you’ll get it live at some point, and will just embed a song and a link to your blog’s homepage.
I made 2021 Virtual Advent Tour badges in 600px and 400px that you’re welcome to download and use.
If you want to share on social media, I use the hashtag #VirtualAdventTour on Twitter.
Thanks in advance for making this one of my fun December traditions!
