Christmas Life Rule #245:

Don't write out cards while watching Santa Claus is Comin' to Town. The story is a little cutesy trying to fit all the Santa myths into one coherent narrative, but it works pretty well, it has the voices of Keenan Wynn and Mickey Rooney, the Rankin-Bass stop-motion work is flawless, and the songs are great.

So if you get a card from us where one of the signatures looks a bit wonky, that's probably just because I was signing while belting out "Put One Foot in Front of the Other" along with Kris and the Winter Warlock. :-)

Watched A Charlie Brown Christmas as well last night. Occasionally chat about the "Peanuts" specials comes up, with people discussing the relative merits of early and later ones. I think the first four were the best and then they gradually lost quality. Charlie Brown Christmas comes with another Yuletide Peanuts story on the DVD, It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown. It's pretty bad, just a series of gags from the strip, with an inane thread about Sally and a kid she thinks is named Herald Angel, but no real plot like Christmas or Great Pumpkin or Charlie Brown's All-Stars had. There's a new special on tonight, I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown which I'll check out, but I'm not holding out much hope. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised instead.

I worked with an assortment of cards this year, not a single design. I used to prefer multiple designs when I was in my 20s, but started to prefer a single design, something I thought represented myself or later my husband and I. It was a nice change this year to pick out a design that I thought was appropriate to the individual I was sending it to. But next year I'll probably return to the single design, since there's not that many good assortments out there.

Ironically, after finding a nice font to print on the gold-framed holly labels and signing and stuffing the cards and rubbing on the stamps (drat, I ran out of Christmas stamps, too), I forgot and left the cards on the desk this morning!!! Utterly typical of life, as February Callendar would say.