Yule Love It
This quaint combination of fire and music is soothing, smart, and good for your brain.
The televised yule log is a long-standing tradition that originated in 1966 to give New York broadcasters the day off. In place of talking heads, a burning fireplace and Christmas music would replace the news and business as usual. And as I write this listening to Bing Crosby sing “Winter Wonderland” over crackling embers, my holiday wish is to stare into fire year-round without looking like a plotting psychopath.
Experts like psychiatrist Ryan Sultan, M.D., the director of the New York City-based private practice Integrative Psych and a research professor at Columbia University, confirm that there is a sense of calm that comes with a controlled flame. That is why a smoldering fireplace (or even a Yule log on YouTube) can act as a “cheat code” for achieving a meditative state.
If you’re looking for a new way to chill out, treat yourself to a Freestanding Electric Fireplace and Vintage Victrola Record Player. That way, you can fire up tunes for whatever 2025 will throw at you.
The Storied Art of Choosing a Good White Elephant Gift (Yes, It is an Art)
Say what you will about White Elephant exchanges: we love a low bar. These (ideally) boozy, low-pressure gatherings have, according to the New York Times, been around since at least the 1800s. Legend has it the name White Elephant comes from a Siamese King who would punish his courtiers by gifting them a beautiful white pachyderm – something too valuable to get rid of, and too annoying to keep. This speaks to one of the most important things to consider at these exchanges: what makes them fun is finding gifts that are cool enough to keep and even squabble over, but ultimately useless. It’s all about toeing the line. This is why Chia pets are such a perennial classic. Everyone needs an Alf Chia Pet, yet no one needs an Alf Chia Pet.
Dumping true, undesirable junk at an exchange is a jerk move. It’s also boring because an item that is too bad is too disposable. It’s the gift equivalent of the joke by late comedian Mitch Hedberg: “When someone gives me a flier, it’s kind of like them saying: here. You throw this away.”
To get a bit high (and low) brow, White Elephant gifts are kind of camp. Camp is that je ne sais quoi quality of something that Ru Paul once described as the “(ability) to see the absurdity of life from outside yourself.” Camp is playful, cool, and larger than life. Camp is this full-sized gummy hot dog that you know you’d be pretty pissed if someone stole from you.
The Smoking Section
Notes on an infrequent filthy habit.
Cig #4
“When I told him, ‘I only smoke one Camel light a week,’ he said, ‘That sounds like a convenient excuse.’ A former smoker, he took a drag off of his nicotine vape and conceded ‘it does look cooler than this.’ But that was the thing. Smoking was not the cool part. The restraint is.”
Couch-Lock Movie Club: Sister Act 2 Is a Christmas Movie
If you think the discourse around Die Hard being a Christmas movie has gotten tired, hold my eggnog. I have a much dumber argument: Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit is a Christmas movie.
After posing as a fake nun to avoid getting murdered, Vegas showgirl Delores Van Cartier gets called back to the convent to save St. Francis High School’s choir. Think Dangerous Minds, but instead of Michelle Pfeiffer teaching about poetry, Whoopi Goldberg would be teaching about The Lord. To someone who’s only seen this movie once or twice, it’s easy to write it off as a lazy sequel that makes little sense. But when held to the same standard as Christmas movies, this is a nearly perfect movie that crushes the original, like Santa destroying a plate of cookies.
Thanks to vaguely religious bangers like “Oh Happy Day” from City High’s Ryan Toby and “Joyful, Joyful” from an up-and-coming Lauryn Hill, this soundtrack deserves to be playing as a Christmas ham is being baked. Of course, Christmas is not mentioned once during the movie, and it’s hard to get a sense of time and place in the film other than in San Fransisco during the school year. All the more reasons why the film’s writers should have put a Christmas tree in the background and maybe a rap battle about the day itself.
Without those details, Sister Act 2 technically falls in the “Christmas-adjacent” category with movies like The Shining, Groundhog Day, and Grand Budapest Hotel. The distinction is how you define a Christmas movie — a story that takes place during Christmas time or a story that can be enjoyed year after year, regardless of what it’s about.
When everything is going on, and nothing is going on at the same time, a true Christmas movie is one that brings the most comfort. And there is something about a fake, freestyling nun getting glued to her seat that makes me feel safe.
So…What Have You Been up To? (Hopefully Not Being Asked This.)
Catching up. It sounds good in theory until you’re face to face with an aunt or a college friend you can’t seem to articulate your life to. Broad questions like “How have you been?” or “What have you been up to?” are well-meaning enough: we all want to know what loved ones have been getting into in the time since we’ve last seen them. The problem is these questions can be too vague or broad to be meaningfully answered. What have I been up to, like today? This week? This decade? Professionally? Romantically? Chronically?
Rather than get stuck in these conversation sandtraps, we love the idea of icebreakers, which are more specific and offer a chance for real thought-provoking conversation. Substacker @robwalker regularly has guests pose ice breakers on his blog “The Art of Noticing.” Recent favorites have included, “If you could live inside the world of any piece of art for a day, which would you choose?” from substacker @AbraMcAndrew; and “When have you felt touched by something larger than yourself?” from substacker @AndreaTrancoso.
We’ve also been having luck with the surprisingly simple yet specific “What have you been spending most of your time doing lately?”
The Forecast: December 25th - Christmas Day/First Day of Hanukkah and all of the sports. Chiefs at Steelers 10am PT 1pm ET; Ravens at Texans 1:30pm PT, 4:30 PM ET (Beyonce performing at halftime)/Lakers at Warriors 5pm PT 8pm ET/Timberwolves at Mavericks 11:30am PT 2:30pm ET
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