1. Christmas music, I'm kind of a stickler in that I'll only listen to it after Thanksgiving until maybe New Year's Eve, but once it's time, Christmas music plays pretty much non-stop on my ipod. Some favorites include Point of Grace, obviously N'Sync and Mariah Carey, but a newly discovered pair, Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors, and Dave Barnes. I met Drew and Ellie at Frontier this summer when they were the special music for session one and fell in love with their music but even more with them as a couple. They have an incredible outreach with kids because of their music and it was awesome to see the way they draw kids in just by being who they are. As a result of being part of the younglife world for a little bit, I hear about all their music events on facebook and got SUPER excited when I found out that they were touring with Dave Barnes this Christmas. So naturally, when I got an itunes giftcard, I went ahead and downloaded both of their Christmas albums. I've always loved Drew and Ellie's "Baby It's Cold Outside", in fact, that was the song that piqued my interest in them to begin with. But Dave Barnes' "Very Merry Christmas" and his rendition of "I'll Be Home for Christmas" have tied for my favorite Christmas songs this holiday season. If I was dating someone, you can bet we'd be slow-dancing to "I'll Be Home for Christmas" right this minute.
2. Christmas cookies- decorating Christmas cookies and holiday baking in general makes me so happy. I think it takes me back to Holipalooza, which leads to # 3...
3. Silent Night Christmas chapel and Silent Night and Holipalooza. Silent Night chapel is just the best because it's basically all Christmas carols and then Randy gives a little advent message then we all sing Silent Night while holding our lit candles high. I love it so much that I centered my recent little TU roadtrip around getting to go to that chapel again.
So, while I did NOT attend Silent Night or more than 5 minutes of Holipalooza during my recent trip, it does not diminish my love for them. They're such great traditions, when you're a student. When you're no longer a student and most of your friends at TU are guys who will be standing in the guys' section, Silent Night seems just a little bit overwhelming. And Holipalooza is more overwhelming when you don't know 90% of the people crammed into the DC. But when I was a student and knew far too much of the TU student population, I loved it. And apparently, quite a few people love Silent Night, hence it's recent mention on ESPN and Yahoo News. Silent Night on ESPN...
Not the best picture of me, but all the goodness of Holipalooza and the christmas PJ's wrapped into one.4. Christmas commercials... or really, I should say Christmas TV. Forget the Superbowl, Christmastime has the best commercials on TV. For those of you who might remember, French Vanilla cool whip was one of the best, which is right up there with the Hershey's Kisses as bells commercial. They're all great. They actually make me want to watch TV. Then you add in the Christmas episodes of shows like Glee which are full of Christmas music and Charlie Brown Christmas playing on TV, man, it just gets me excited.
5. I'll keep this post relatively short, but last but not least, Christmas break and time with my family/ at my grandmother's house/ our big Christmas tree with all the old school ornaments and SNOW. While I may claim to hate snow (after 3 feet last October at Frontier, I'm still trying to recover), I secretly kind of love it. It's beautiful, it means you can go sledding, and I've never not had a white Christmas. Christmas means snow, that's just the way it goes. And nativity scenes and my grandma's candles in the windows...man, there's just so much goodness. Even Starbucks is beautiful at Christmas- everyone gets all decked out. Hmm, it really is the most wonderful time of year.
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