This week, I’m thinking about holiday traditions. This Teresa Wu newsletter rounded up a bunch from different folks, including a holiday crafting party which feels like something I should co-opt?
For my entire life, my family did a Christmas Eve/Nochebuena situation, but when my sister and I had our babies in 2019, we pushed for a Christmas Day breakfast which has worked out so much better. My mother has always put up decorations, including the tree, the day after Thanksgiving, turning our apartment into a Winter Wonderland rivaled only by the Santa floor at Macy’s. And for years, she always decorated with angels, but she has since begun to switch it up year by year. This year, she has a Grinch theme as decreed by my niece.
I am fairly certain there is a tree under there
For about a dozen years, I bought real trees, but last year I became utterly fed up with the needles. This year, I bought a big ol’ artificial tree and I am so thrilled about it. It looks great! It’s enormous! Zu put all the ornaments on without making a mess everywhere! (Are the majority of the ornaments 4’ and below? Yes, but that is beside the point) Being able to bend the branches however is most convenient? I LOVE IT SO MUCH. Next year, I’ll be able to put the tree up the day after Thanksgiving, the way it should be.
Zu, of course, is obsessed with Christmas, and has her own tiny tabletop tree in her room which she decorated in true MAXIMALIST fashion (she is her Grammy’s child, truly). The two of them also make all sorts of Christmas crafts every weekend between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Yes, there is glitter and sequins all over the place. The price I pay for holiday magic.
find the tree
In 2020, I ordered a 100 pack of ornaments (10 of each shape) and every year Zu decorates them and then we give them to family and friends. The first year, I was so anxious about getting paint everywhere (we did) and now it is one of my favorite traditions, along with Zu putting the star on the top of the tree.
an ornament evolution
Can’t neglect my pop culture traditions! Off the top of my head, things I always watch: Elf, The Family Stone, While You Were Sleeping, the Christmas episodes of The Office (Season 2 & 3), New Girl (Season 1), Mindy Project (Season 2), Gilmore Girls (Season 2), Schitt’s Creek, and the Chrismukkah episode of The O.C.
This week in reading. . .
Margo’s Got Money Troubles lived up to the hype. Compulsively readable and darkly funny. Loved to hear that it was going to be made into a TV show with Nick Offerman. We Love the Nightlife was a lot of funnnn. I liked it a lot more than I liked her previous book, Stone Cold Fox. After a few weeks where I wasn’t sure if I would, I hit my official reading goal for the year and am stupidly relieved. Why-oh-why do I apply so much pressure on myself this way?
This week in listening. . .
This Christmas by Donny Hathaway, the best Christmas song.
This week in TV. . .
The second season of The Diplomat was so much fun. Keri Russell is the best.
Finished Disclaimer and I HATED the ending. Hated. It. So. Much.
This week in a gif. . .
This week in a newsletter. . .
Roxane and Tembe?!?! Iconic duo!
Kolina Cicero on how she reads so much despite having two kids.
This week in google searches. . .
coconut fruit seed
chiltern wickstead uniform
felt stop animation
This week in one good thing. . .
Took Zu to the circus and watching her face while she watched some of the daredevil acts was the absolute best.
This week in a quote. . .
“Time isn’t the enemy. The fear of time is. So, go live. Make a memory your future self will thank you for.” - Megan Park
This week in artsy stuff and photo things. . .
This BTS of the Wicked set.
New Larry Fink photo book.
Tiny UFO dioramas.
This week on the internet. . .
Maybe we can all agree to stop talking about celebrity bodies? Ella Cerón i wrote about the current discourse. The way media talked about Kate Winslet’s body during her Titanic era (and kind of always?) is completely INSANE.
In my humble opinion, Drake would need a personality transplant and the greatest ghost writers in the world to recover from the L he has taken this year and “come back”
Been taking my sweet time reading this interview with Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes. I meannnnnn. . .
OBSESSED
Absolutely love that Sally Rooney is using her platform to talk about the climate crisis.
This Melissa Febos essay on her face.
Jia Tolentino on the United Healthcare assassination and the jokes that followed.
me, as the first call for all my friends,
Leonor
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