Windows are as essential to office prestige as Christmas is to retailing.
Then when I got in the military I used to host - even in high school - I hosted the talent shows and when I was in the military I would host all of our base Christmas parties and stuff.
At school there was an annual school disco and I'd be standing in my bedroom wondering what to wear for hours on end. Eventually I'd arrive at a decision that was just the most ridiculous costume you could have ever devised - I think it was probably knitted Christmas jumpers on top of buttoned-up white shirts.
No sane local official who has hung up an empty stocking over the municipal fireplace is going to shoot Santa Claus just before a hard Christmas.
In our racist sexist society Christmas is the 8 hours when we stop killing each other and gratutious over eating is encouraged so that the starving and other people in the world can die!
I wouldn't recommend young kids see 'Speedway Junkie.' It's definitely an age-appropriate movie - dark and realistic and edgy. If young kids want to see me go see the Christmas movie.
I put the copy of 'A Christmas Carol' that my grandfather had first read to me 60 years ago on my desk and I began to write. The result for better or for worse is the 'Christmas Spirits.' I plan to read it to my grandson.
The upheavals of adolescence silenced 'A Christmas Carol' for a few years. I became a firebrand atheist. Christmas - humbug! Too commercial! Then I became an agnostic. Christmas was a pro-forma affair basically a chore. Buy mother a book dad a new tie my brother and sister small gifts. Pretend thanks for the fountain pens and shirts I received.
Every Christmas now for years I have found myself wondering about the point of the celebration. As the holiday has become more ecumenical and secular it has lost much of the magic that I remember so fondly from childhood.
It felt very natural to me to write a Christmas song but at the same time I had to really put all sorts of pressure aside and just let the creativity flow and see what came out.