5 Things We Know On A Sunday
- If you’ve waited until now to listen to Christmas music, enjoy colorful lights and great decorations; you’ve cheated yourself of Joy. Don’t do that. We need all the Joy we can get in this world. Why would you ever want to compress and rush…things you enjoy. . . Tell someone Merry Christmas today!
- “Little Drummer Boy”, no matter who performs it, is the worst traditional Christmas song out there. There can be no debate. Absolute knob turner for us. Would rather listen to Bruce Springsteen sing, “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” for the 4,897th time on an old rock station….
- Absolutely curious about this one. How many of y’all still send out Christmas cards? Are Christmas cards now relegated to the past….Is it an Age Thing? If you’re under 35 or so, have you ever sent out Christmas cards and do you get any cards from anyone under 35? I feel like we should make Christmas cards great again, but I know if I say that, it will end up being my wife having to do it because no one can read my handwriting. So, in 2025, how many of our friends in Raiderland will be sending out cards this year?
- The first real Cold Front of the season has made its way into the South Plains today and we love it! I’m much more cold weather guy than hot weather guy these days. Plus, you get the added benefit of having justification to enjoy all of your favorite Winter meals. Winter gives us much better menus in my opinion. Chili. Stew. Soups. Chili Dogs. Chili Cheese Fries. Queso. Heavy Mexican Food dishes. Dumplings. The list goes on and it dwarfs a nice “summer salad” …. What’s on the menu for y’all now that the perfect time of Food Season is upon us? Did I mention it’s Egg Nog season too!
- You’ve got 31 days in December to make a huge difference in your life and those around you. Don’t wait until the New Year to start whatever it is you’ve been wanting to do. December is like a deadline. Deadlines get things done. So, enjoy the month and make the most of it. Don’t look at it like the end of the year, rather approach it as the beginning of everything you want in the coming year. 31 powerful days. Don’t rush it, just maximize it. That will be your Christmas gift to yourself this year!
Hyatt
Thanks for being out there and taking a few minutes to read what we’re thinking about this week. We love to get your comments and thoughts and of course we appreciate it when you share what we do here with your friends! See y’all Monday morning when we recap a great weekend.
Nothing wrong with indulging one’s whims whenever they want to – but I defer to the old adage of “everything in moderation” or better: “everything has its time”. One thing I love about being Gen X is that we had to wait on things like “A Charlie Brown Christmas” to air again but we also were the first to be able to buy our own copy to have & cherish. “No chance of missing it now!”, bellows my triumphant inner kid.
The Lesson is: I could watch it whenever I want but I don’t because I know it loses something in vast repetition. You kinda go there yourself when you mention Springsteen’s seasonal song .. I never want to refer to Charlie Brown & the gang for “the umpteenth time”. I still treat it as a rare & wondrous thing – the gift that it was; a thing that never should have been had the sponsors had their way (a story for another day). Music is a time machine for me – Christmas music even more so. I’m suddenly 9 years-old again, living my best life, as my mother decorates, bakes & drops the needle on a vinyl stack that seems endless on the Hi-Fi console. We await company & cheer over the next 30 days. Everyone is in a better mood. Dad isn’t deployed & all the catalogs are under my thumb as I sit by the hearth perusing their pablum dreams & wishes.
As much as I want that feeling 24/7/365, I know it isn’t reality & I know it wouldn’t be the same. I just told my mother, who was a bit sad that she “wouldn’t be doing much” for the holidays, that there wasn’t anything to be missed as no one does Thanksgiving through Christmas the way her generation did. It was the saddest “bright side” I’ve ever uttered. “You’re not missing out because it isn’t happening!”. Ugh.
So, the point is, there’s a fine line. It’s not a hateful thing or even a critical one – people should do what makes them happy BUT BUT BUT it should come with a word of gentle caution: Be careful of self-Indulgences, you can go to the well too many times. As evidence we can all relate to, I offer up A Christmas Story that runs ad nauseum .. or it did for more than a decade – I’ve stopped “seeing” it subconsciously. They ruined that movie for a lot of people. I can’t tell you the last time I watched a little of it much less all the way through. “Fudge” is right, I say. It has become like the old jukebox’s Stairway to Heaven, Freebird, or Hotel California that was relegated to “never play again” status by house bands & barmaids by the end of my college run.
Closer to home & the now, I was bored the other night; very very late, couldn’t sleep and/or didn’t want to. I cruised through the Free Movies on the tv. My favorite version of A Christmas Carol was available – the b/w one with Alistair Sim as Scrooge. There was also It’s a Wonderful Life. I chose neither. I watch those at some random time in the week prior to Christmas. That’s my tradition – the waiting.
Waiting is the point. Bigger than my words here, I mean the waiting upon everything BUT most importantly learning patience & gratitude during ADVENT.
We all know what the world has done to Christmas .. it’s Black Friday Weekend afterall.
I wait upon Christmas.
I wait upon the Lord; Emmanuel.
No, this isn’t a chastisement; anyone can & should play Mele Kalikimaka by Bing Crosby whenever they want to hear it but this notion of Christmas in July or whatever the consumers dream of next is just a waste – or more accurately: an over-indulgence. Like overdoing anything .. work, eating, sleeping, drinking etc.
I like being 9 again without a doubt. For just a lil bit.
It is the sweetest end of the bittersweet rainbow of memories.
That’s my 2 cents adjusted for inflation.
No one has done anything “wrong”, just something to consider .. on a Sunday.
You’ve become kind of a tradition yourself, Hyatt. I look forward to these each Sunday. And only on Sunday. You could do “5 Things” every day but then Sunday would be less somehow .. the obvious but still somehow secret subtext of why Chick-fil-A is successful, yes? The waiting. Ya can’t have it every day.
“Ya can’t always get what ya want ..”, sung the Stones – well, our generation fixed that.
Tom Petty knows what I mean. Ya take it on faith, ya take it to the heart ..
Greg Lake’s take is pretty sobering, and more on point, too – for a deep cut Christmas song aficionado like yourself.
By the way, yes, I still send Christmas cards out. My list is now single digits versus the vast triple digit weighty expense it once was in the early 90s. That’s when things started to change; by the dawn of Y2K.