A Charlie Brown Christmas

Maybe it was the tater tots we'd had for dinner—my grandmother used to make them when all the cousins gathered at her house on Sunday nights to eat rotisserie chicken and watch the Disney movie—but I waxed sentimental when watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" with the kids a couple of evenings ago. Could I really be viewing this childhood staple with my own children? It was surreal.

When piano-playing Schroeder rebuffed Lucy's advances by plunking out "Jingle Bells" on the keys with one finger and then rolled into a syncopated number, our boy said, "That's jazz! Hey, man, that's not Christmas music...that's jazz!" A few minutes later, as Linus recited his biblical soliloquy, I got all verklempt watching the kids watch his performance. And I about lost it when, as Charlie Brown was carrying his pathetic little tree home to decorate it, our little guy started singing along with the soundtrack's lilting instrumental of "O Christmas Tree."

If I could skip all the madness for more moments like that, I would.

Santa's Secret Is Out

When I was a girl, I thought (like all kids do) that Santa got around in a sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer—nine if you count Rudolph—and that he left all the present preparation to the elves.

Now that I'm grown, I know that Santa skulks around between 8 and 11pm when the mall is tolerable and, when it really matters, has little regard for sales. He also occasionally breaks up a late-night shopping trip with a 10pm Cosmopolitan. Not that there's anything wrong with that.