Low-Key Xmas

I thoroughly approve of this thought piece on not going overboard on Christmas and Boxing Day.  This was the least effort I've put into Christmas in a long-time.

My son wasn't even coming home until Dec. 23, and my daughter wasn't going to help, so we (or perhaps me unilaterally) decided to forgo putting up a Christmas tree this year.  I was able to find the stockings, and those were hung by the chimney.  I also put out some outdoor lights on a tree in the front yard.  (Half of one strand malfunctioned.  While I will see if it is possible to repair, I may also see if Home Depot has the same brand on sale now that Christmas proper has passed.)

We didn't buy a lot of gifts this year, so I was able to wrap them on the 23rd.  Here they are in front of the fireplace.  (The boxes towards the back are purely decorative...)

While I had bought cards from the dollar store, it was a bit of a scramble to get them signed on Christmas morning, which is also when we bought and exchanged Amazon gift cards, so that was last minute shopping for sure.

My son and his mother mostly watched sports all day.  I have almost no interest in professional sports and certainly don't have the patience to watch on television, so that freed me up to finish up a couple of books and to watch Terry Gilliam's Brazil.  It is actually a Christmas film, just as Die Hard is, though I don't know if I would make it a new holiday tradition.  We'll see.  While it wasn't a secret, it was only this time around I watched some of the bonus features and realized Tom Stoppard contributed to the script.  I also was quite intrigued by a shadowy figure that seems to be following Sam or keeping an eye on the Buttles or both.  I don't think this is supposed to be Jack (Palin's character).  One of these days I will watch the movie with audio commentaries on to see if this is better explained.  However, it might just be a glancing reference to The Third Man or another film noir, as it doesn't actually seem to advance the plot.

I took my daughter for a walk.  I was surprised that several Ethiopian restaurants were open.  We had more than enough food in the house, so I didn't attempt to make this a new tradition (going out for Ethiopian on Christmas Day).

Then I watched Blade Runner (The Final Cut) with my son.  He had never seen it and thought it was a great movie.  I haven't seen it in quite some time.  It still holds up well.  I said maybe on his next visit we'd watch Blade Runner 2049.  This is another film where I probably will want to go through the audio commentary.  There are some other bonus features, including a documentary on how different the movie is from the PDK novel.  In fact, there is apparently some footage of PDK talking about his reactions to the movie!  I had no idea such a thing existed at all.

And that was pretty much it for Christmas.  I did give some money to charities, in a couple of cases getting in on places where gifts were being matched.  And I bought a few books, most getting shipped to Chicago due to exorbitant shipping prices to Toronto.  I'll discuss those in a follow-up post because there is an interesting Edward Gorey connection.  

Now that it's Boxing Day, we're off to the AGO, which is almost a family tradition.  Ciao!