Tag: Christmas

Wendy McClure recounts how an old audio tape of holiday music becomes a record of family history, unspoken rituals, and grief.

Working the night shift on an intensive care unit, Suzanne Ohlmann brushes up against death, Jesus, and her biological father.

The psychology behind America’s obsession with Hallmark Christmas movies.

Mom would make excuses about not having cleaned the house. I knew they were lies. I knew her house was full.

Long after winter has ended, hating on Christmas remains popular sport, as much a holiday tradition as eggnog and overspending.

It’s always the same: a morning arrives in November, and my friend, as though officially inaugurating the Christmas time of year that exhilarates her imagination and fuels the blaze of her heart, announces: “It’s fruitcake weather! Fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat.” “A Christmas Memory,” Truman Capote ’Tis the season! A time for awkwardly posed […]

As soon as we’re finished, Thad shuffles to the garage to grab two 150-or-so-gallon black garbage bags. We stuff all of the presents inside, double-knot the bags at the top, and drag them to the front door, confident that the next morning, not one of our kids — not even the nine-year-old — will wonder […]

I wish Christmas lasted forever. Okay, maybe not forever, but at least a week. I try to make this a reality by visiting different family members and friends and exchanging gifts during the week between Christmas & New Year’s, “forgetting” these gifts and having to revisit aforementioned friends, listening to Christmas music longer than conventionally appropriate, and […]