Schmolidays* are for BonnetHeads**

It's that time.  The time when holidays are crammed into our brains and our faces and our noses and our mouth holes.  It's the Schmolidays.

Like just about everyone these days, I have a love-hate relationship with the Schmolidays.

I love that in Chicago, really the ONLY place to celebrate, it's cold and snowy and beautifully lit.







I love that I am in a loving relationship these days and don't feel lonely or sad or missing out as I used to during this time.

I love that I don't have to go to church anymore.  It's true.  What can I say, my inner heathen has won against the rest of my family's Christian traditional ways of churching on xmas eve.  I am grateful I no longer have to endure that hell.  Partly because my family finally accepts - and quite lovingly stopped harassing me about it - that I'm not a christian anymore (dunked in the river newly baptised at 16!) and also because they moved to Arizona.  They do a good job of loving me for who I am and not pushing me, TODAY.  Obviously, they have been through a lot with me and probably figure as long as I'm sober they aren't going to push it.  My mom used to tell me "I can't stand to think of being in Heaven without you."  To which I replied, "well you will manage somehow and why don't we try to get the most of our time here instead or worrying about some unknown resting place".  My eternal soul will take it's chances living a good and loving life here on earth one day at a time.  I'm not going to rail on my family or Christianity.  I respect my family too much for that. 

So, in light of Jesus being the "reason for the season", I am conflicted.  I celebrate the traditions of this holiday and yet, what is it's meaning for me, really?  I don't celebrate the birth of a baby savior.   What I do know is that it isn't about spending money and material things.  But that is how I live my life anyway.  I love freshly baked cookies and black coffee and kickin' holiday music along with the nostalgic holiday specials we watch year after year.  I love the twinkling lights and the roaring fires and the glorious smell of pine.  I do. 

So how to reconcile that with not believing in the whole basis of this holiday?  As with many things these days, I've stopped fighting it.  I don't have to stand up against Christmas.  It's not my job to declare how I feel about it.  Even though that is exactly what I'm doing in this post, but you get the idea.  I try my damnedest to live and let live.  I celebrate the love and stay away from the dark as best I can.  It's part of how I live the 12 steps. 

The whole debate of Happy Christmas vs. Happy Holidays exhausts me.  Believe whatever you want to.  Just don't expect that I won't do the same.  I want to have a happy holiday.  I want you to have a happy holiday.  I am doing my best not to set foot in an actual store and deal with you.  These seem like opposite notions.  The holidays tend to be when the media tells us to love each other more.  And yet, so much of this season is just gross and ugly. 

This won't shock you.  I want the Plum Creek Christmas.  So badly.  Simple and loving and beautiful.  The Ingalls were so grateful for everything they had and any shitty present they received because they didn't know any better.  I want that gratitude.  I want that pure joy.  I know it's a bygone time and all, but it's what I aspire too.  I even don't mind their stupid little church and stupid little bible stories.  Because it was a simple, non-combative and non-electric-guitar-laser-light-show time of churchiness.

Enjoy this Plum Creek Christmas.  Pa and Ma are waiting for you by the fire with some coffee and pie.  Oleson's Mercantile is open for new stoves  - just don't tell Ma.

these are my definitions, not legal and binding.
*Schmolidays - snarky term for holidays
**BonnetHeads - big geeky fans of bonnets, LHOTP and prairie simpler times.  you remember this one, right? Bring Back the Bonnet!

Bring Back the Bonnet!

I have a bit of a problem when it comes to Little House on the Prairie. Let me clarify, the true history of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Pioneer women is something I have obsessive tendencies over as well, but I'm speaking about the television show here.  My husband bought me the entire box set last Christmas and it's 8 million (roughly) hours of goodness and light that I sneak watching as often as I can when he's not around.

I know, it's old and really sappy, cheesy stuff, but I love it.  Like comfort food.  It makes me laugh and cry and teaches me life lessons along the way.  Like when an animal dies and Pa comforts the girls.  Or when Laura inevitably has a crush on a boy and Nellie ruins it for her by recording her voice talking all about it and plays it in front of Miss Beadle's whole class!

I've recently read Melissa Gilbert's book, Alison Arngrim's HILARIOUS and yummy book, Confessions of a Prairie Bitch (read it, seriously).

Wendy McClure's book called The Wilder Life, in which she visits many of the historical sites, meaning I don't have to make my husband do it with me, for which he is grateful to you - thanks Wendy! READ THIS BOOK!!!

The thing is, you never read anything horrible about anyone on that show.  I have read every tell-all and watched every documentary, and it's just not there, unless someone is really doing a good job of hiding it.  They drank and smoked their way through filming, but who didn't back then?

I long to visit the set of the LHOTP show, but it was burned to ground bitches!~  by Michael Landon and the cast in their last hurrah.  Good for them, bad for fans like me.

I have a fondness for Pa Ingalls played by Michael Landon that is at times, too intimate.  I feel like the tenderness in his eyes speaks right to me.  I mean, come on!

I feel like his sound advice and pullyourselfupbyyourbootstraps is a lesson that we all need to be taught, especially now in this day and age where everyone things they DESERVE success in life.  How much better is this show to watch than something like Hannah Montana or some disney garbage?  I mean LHOTP has god stuff in it which we all know I can't stomach, but I can overlook that.

 

Another thing, I've always had a mad crush on Doc Baker.

I know most girls crushed on Almanzo, but not me. Doc Baker was steady like a stream and always able to fix anything with a thermometer and a compress.

I am following a group of people on Twitter that have taken on the personas of the LHOTP cast. And I pretend that they are really the characters. Tweeting.

Pretending is fun!

Part of it is I long to be a Prairie girl, with land of my own and animals and fields.  I know it would be hard work and I would need help, but a girl can dream can't she?  This city girl is fascinated with the simple yet fulfilling life that it seems to be.  I glamourize it for sure.  Also?  outhouses. 

Tonight I have the rare opportunity go see Alison Arngrim at a library in the suburbs of Chicago.  This requires I get outside my comfort zone of the city and drive to the suburbs, which always intimidates me.  But I'm doing it.  I have a fangirl issue here with myself I realize.  My husband tentatively says, "have fun!" because he loves me and just knows.  I will try to contain my geekdom, but I can't promise anything.  I am not a starstruck person, except in rare cases like this, and also she happens to be an author. We all know I whore it out for writers. Hopefully I won't make too much of an ass out of myself and con her into taking a photo with me.

I love Nellie so damn much.

Bonnets on and ready!!!

UPDATE!

Lovely and funny and smart and kind.

Yes, totally starstruck.