Beep. Beep. Beep.
Winter has arrived and lately, I have been hitting that snooze button over and over and over again. The lyrics to “Baby It’s Cold Outside” are, quite frankly, my inner monologue each morning as I fight to leave the comfort of my bed.
I really can’t stay.
Baby it’s cold outside.
I’ve got to go away.
Baby it’s cold outside.
I got a text message from my friend the other day. A week had passed since her annual “Girls Night In” Christmas party and someone wanted the recipe for the Jell-O shots I brought.
Hey, What’s in this drink?
The answer: Fireball.
When “Baby It’s Cold Outside” comes on the radio, I don’t think about that one time in my twenties when someone actually did slip something in my drink, rather I think about my favorite scene from the movie Elf.
That scene, much like the song, captures a moment.
We’ve all experienced moments like this—times when our good sense and reason gave way. When our hearts didn’t listen to our minds.
It’s every make-out session in a car that rubbed our lips raw. It’s every broken curfew of adolescence. It’s the too-expensive Christmas present you buy for a loved one. It’s the ladies at my friend’s Christmas party who put on their coats to leave but then stood around for another twenty minutes talking and laughing (and doing just one more Jell-O shot) before finally heading home.
{via delish.com}
Last year, I wrote about how I just couldn’t Christmas. This year, I’m thankful to say that isn’t the case. In fact, the one thing that has moved me this holiday season is the music.
I find myself humming a few bars from a traditional Christmas tune while I’m waiting for my students to settle down at the start of class. Like a musical meditation of sorts, it’s helped to calm the frayed nerves of a teacher in December and remind me that Winter Break is on the horizon.
I sing a few verses of Same Auld Lang Syne while blow-drying my hair till I can’t remember what comes next and start back at the beginning. “Met my old lover at the grocery store. The snow was falling Christmas Eeee-ee-eeve.”
I purposefully scan through the radio channels till I get to the one that plays non-stop Christmas music because this month, the cacophony of modern music annoys me.
There are a lot of things we do around the holidays that are antiquated. Mailing cards, chopping down trees, and baking cookies from scratch are just a few, but these things, like the Christmas songs and movies that we’ve grown to love, serve to remind us of simpler times.
The holidays are about traditions and traditions, like my Grandma, are old-fashioned. Grandma doesn’t always say the most appropriate things, but we still love her, just like we still love “Baby It’s Cold Outside” and all the other traditions that make up Christmas.
I don’t think it’s fair to apply the standards of today’s political correctness to the classics of yesteryear.
Rather than analyzing a single line from a song or a single scene from a movie, let’s take a step back and look at the bigger picture. If we criticize George Bailey for his attempted suicide and the way he verbally attacks his family (ugh, and that poor teacher), we’ll never enjoy the moment when he realizes that It’s a Wonderful Life.
The last time I handed my grandma a family photo that we’d had professionally taken, she took one look at it and said, “Ooooh, you look like an old lady!” Rather than taking offense, I threw my head back and laughed. “I shouldn’t have said that,” she added. “I’m just not used to seeing you in a long dress.”
“It’s okay, Gram.” I chuckled. Secretly, I live for the shit my gram says. And seeing as how I don’t often get to visit with her anymore coupled with not knowing how many more Christmases she’ll have–or any of us for that matter– I want to cherish every moment.
“Baby It’s Cold Outside” is seventy-four years old. My gram is eighty-eight. Both are welcome in my home for Christmas. I love them just the way they are.
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