For Kathleen and I, this Christmas went over exactly as we had planned it to, cementing our holiday traditions.

On Christmas Eve, we ordered ourselves some delicious vegan food from Wei’s Noodle House on Somerset and enjoyed it as we watched The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) and It’s A Wonderful Life (1946). It was our first year ordering from Wei’s and it will most definitely not be the last. What a treat that was!

For Christmas Day, we began the day with breakfast: pancakes with maple syrup and whipped cream – a significantly more decadent breakfast than we’d normally have – warmed and readied us for the star of the morning: building our lego set!

We chose this year’s set (a street car!) in reference to last year’s (a downtown main street):

1. As a nice reminder of our Toronto visits (ding-ding!) and because in our little head canon, we decided that our little minifigs can’t afford to live downtown and don’t drive, so they needed a nice way to get to their favourite coffee shop, record shop, and plant store.
2. At around 800 pieces, it was half the size. While really fun, last year’s set was over 1,500 pieces and it took us much longer to construct than we were expecting. In the end, our little street car took us about 90 minutes, which is closer to the sort of time we were looking to spend.

After we finished up, we both spoke with family, got ready, and it was time for our little Christmas morning walk.

The east part of the neighbourhood we live in is entirely residential and usually quiet. On Christmas morning, it takes on an even *quieter* feel, as families get out for a walk to enjoy the silence too. At most, outside of the strollers, you see families loading up their cars with food and presents for their own Christmas dinners elsewhere.

After our (admittedly chilly) walk, it was time to get cozy inside and enjoy the rest of the holiday. I developed this roll of film and did a few little chores I’ve been meaning to get to (i.e. combine old and exhausted fixer and stop bath into larger bottles for storage and disposal), and made mashed potatoes for the evening’s meal. Kathleen tried her hand at darning to fix a hole in a sweater she loves.

By mid-afternoon, Kathleen began preparing for the main dish for our Christmas dinner: a vegan wellington. It turned out so well and we both loved it! A slice of the wellington, mashed potatoes, mushroom gravy, and cranberry sauce made for a really cozy and delicious plate that was super fitting for the holiday.

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While we ate, we watched our last of the traditional Christmas movies: One Magic Christmas (1985). Without qualification or reservation, we can both confidently say that it is the *worst* Christmas movie we watch.

At its heart, it’s a 1980s spin on It’s a Wonderful Life (which should be nice), but without the sort of socialist (or at least pro-social) bent of the actual classic. No, instead, it’s both mean and comes off feeling like full-throated pro-capitalist and anit-feminist story.

The main character, Ginny (Mary Steenburgen) is married to a childish and delusional man who has been out of work since June and the family is about to be forced out of the company home. He’s sulky. He’s pouty. He won’t even help pack up the house!

Instead of, you know, looking for work, he has instead spent time fixing and designing bicycles and dreaming of opening a bike shop. It’s Christmas, Ginny’s pulling doubles at the grocery store, and he’s tinkering in the basement and looking for ways to spend the family’s savings on a bigger Christmas celebration.

The movie positions *Ginny* as the grinch in need of spirit. Unlike Jimmy Stewart, instead of showing her what life would be like without her: the angel KILLS HER FAMILY instead. Her husband is shot at the bank by a robber while taking money out of their account (which she opposed) and, the banker using the husband’s idling car as a getaway (he was double-parked) with the kids inside, veered off the road into a river. In a blink, she believes she lost her whole family.

Once this happened, she was given a little bit of a chance to grieve, and then her kids miraculously appear at home, but the husband is still dead and she has to explain to them what happened.

Her youngest daughter, who believes in miracles (a dreamer like her father and grandfather) and believes she can get her father back, runs off to the North Pole with the angel to ask Santa Claus to bring him back. Santa, whose workshop seems to employ people who now seem to toil in the afterlife on the same shop floors they did in life, tells her that he can’t do that: only her mother can, *if she just wasn’t such an unbelieving grinch.*

So you can see how this movie ends: she decides to take Christmas off anyway (*nearly* losing her job – the family’s only income), drains their savings to support her husband’s dream (“I need $5,000 just to open the doors!”), and they make sure to give her brighter, happier makeup too.

Just a reprehensible movie. Yet, we watch it every year!

That’s because it’s also a wonderful time capsule of early-80s Canadiana (in spite of being a Disney thing): filmed in Scarborough, Meaford, and Owen Sound, it’s not only like a Hobo episode in feel, but it even has many of the familiar Canadian actors (“in the Hoboverse,” as we say), like Wayne Robson, Sam Malkin, Jan Rubes, Debra McGrath, Alf Humphreys, and a young Sarah Polley.

So, it’s the most uncomfortable comfort watch the universe has been able to give us!

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