Not-so-silent night

So imagine this: you take your family to a church Christmas pageant somewhere in Pennsylvania.

You get seats, the lights go down, and the pageant begins. There are kids in robes and soloists and teenage holy parents and an older guy playing the Angel Gabriel. There are live sheep. There's even a live (though female) Baby Jesus kicking around up there in the manger.

As everyone admires the beautifully lit and arranged tableau, and heavenly peace fills the room, a cherubic blond 2-year-old standing on his dad's lap announces, at full volume:

"There's Baby Jesus! He's just a baby. I'm a big boy and I go poop in the potty!"

Hopefully you were one of the people who thought this was funny.

So nice to see my family's genetics hard at work.

Must-have gifts

1. EZCombs. Do you like updos? Do you want to look like Sarah Palin? Of course - we all do! Take a gander at the TopsyTail for the new millennium!

2. Glass bat fan pull. I don't know about you, but the idea of a sleeping bat dangling from my overhead ceiling fan doesn't make ME squeamish at all! Just in case you like cohabitating with bats, and really need one hanging over your bed, this item is handblown and only $45!

3. Is there a science buff on your list? How about some giant microbes?

4. Do you want to decrease productivity? Then you need a book on how to procrastinate! Only $9.95. But if you really wanted to procrastinate, would you even get around to reading a book?

5. Speaking of productivity, these will inspire even the laziest employees toward new levels of "success."

6. Just in time for Chanukah - instant conversion! You can order now and probably receive one of these before the menorah is fully lit. Make a mockery out of Judaism for the low, low price of $5.99.

7. Tired of all those annoying people trying to get store credit? Get yourself one of these! The grammatical error is sadly typical of handwritten notices in business establishments nowadays, giving this the perfect authentic touch at only $3.95. Your welcome.

8. While this unique hands-free book light is appealing to me since my Itty Bitty Book Light is always in the way of my page turns, I cannot help but wonder whether this is like a nicotine patch equivalent for people addicted to their Bluetooth hands-free headsets.

9. Can someone explain to me why the world needs pet strollers? Do cats want or need to be perambulated? And what happened to actually walking your dog? But this place has so many models, I'm getting all caught up in trying to pick my favorite!

10. If you weren't already annoyed by forced holiday frivolity, stop by your Hallmark Gold Crown Store and pick up the 2008 version of Irritating Animated Hallmark Holiday Object From Hell. $14.95 with your purchase of 3 Hallmark cards (none of which "sing," I hope).

Bonus! For further entertainment, here are five more gift ideas that will make everyone love you. Everyone!!

Puppy love

So Joe Biden is getting a new puppy and people are already giving him static about getting the dog from a breeder instead of from a shelter.

Well, yes, it would have been better PR, not to mention saving a dog's life, had he opted for one from a shelter. There are many German shepherds living in shelters across the nation. They're huge when they grow up, they eat a lot, and they are scary looking. Any one of those things can cause owners to give them up. Especially now.

But in Pennsylvania, capital of the puppy mill, it's not P.C. any more to get your dog from a breeder. I guess the Bidens, being from Delaware and all, didn't get that memo.

Don't get me wrong: I hate puppy mills, and I hate it that unscrupulous people are making money off of suffering animals. But let's not tar all dog breeders and kennel owners as evil profiteers. Some of them actually work very hard to improve bloodlines, perpetuate good traits, and avoid hereditary conditions. Raising healthy dogs for sale or breeding (well, raising even one healthy dog) is neither a cheap enterprise nor a big moneymaker. Believe me, you don't see dog breeders living in McMansions and cruising around in a Lexus SUV.

Shelter adoptions are great, but not for everyone. Ethical breeders have every right to do what they're doing. And the Bidens have every right to pick the dog they feel will best suit their situation.

In Biden's defense:

1. He's owned several shepherds before and is familiar with this breed and its needs. He isn't just doing this because he's always wanted "a big black dog."

2. He and his family have researched their breeder. They're not calling some shady classified ad or stopping at a "Puppies 4 Sale" sign along the road. And they're not going to a pet store. In other words, they're being very responsible. Much more responsible than many would-be dog owners.

3. This dog is not going to have a normal dog's life. Instead of taking walks and snuffling around in the yard, he's going to live in a gilded cage of sorts, and need to adjust to a lot of situations a normal dog wouldn't. Given that, they are probably better off getting a puppy who is so young it won't have a basis for comparison.

4. A shelter dog that's been abandoned, neglected, confined, or abused could react to being in a guarded fishbowl in any number of unhappy ways. Lots of visitors and strangers in the house? Rotating and armed security staff? Press corps encounters? Not a good place for a traumatized dog. Heck, even a normal dog might not enjoy all this. If I were Barney, I'd probably bite reporters too.

5. Finally, if you were going to be Vice President, with all the potential threats on your life and nutjobs who will try to infiltrate your world, wouldn't you WANT a big intimidating breed that makes people nervous? From a breeder who breeds K9 officers? Duh.

I truly hope the Obamas, inexperienced dog owners that they appear to be, are considering this along with Malia's dog-allergy situation.

UPDATE

Biden announced that, in addition to the puppy, the family will be adopting a shelter dog. Little "Champ" will have a buddy! Everybody wins!

That is all.

'Tis the season

So we're off to another holiday season.

It's sort of hard to tell when the season starts anymore, since certain radio stations around here start with the all-Christmas format by the first weekend in November. I accidentally discovered this when the kids went out for dinner with our babysitter (who drove my car) and then requested Christmas music when we got in the car the next day. I thought maybe she'd had a Christmas CD, or that they were hallucinating from too many Chicken McNuggets, but when I turned on the radio, there was Andy Williams heralding the most wonderful time of the year! GAAH!

While I would normally groan about this insanity, I soon discovered that voluntarily listening to Christmas music in November was like a magic drug that keeps my kids quiet in the backseat. They ask for it, they get it. Even when they don't ask for it, they get it. Heck, I'll take Air Supply's version of "Sleigh Ride" over bickering, crying, hair-pulling preschoolers anytime.

Though I still draw the line at a certain few songs. In that case, I switch over to the other radio station with Christmas format.

Someday (along with my spiel about how I had to walk to school all by myself) I'll tell the kids about how radio stations stuck to their normal format but mixed in more and more holiday songs as December went on. Then you'd get the 24 Hours of Christmas format for, well, 24 hours. Quaint concept, huh? I feel so old.

As a child of the '80s, I always felt like the holiday season couldn't quite kick off until I heard "Do They Know It's Christmas" and "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)." And on a less respectable note, "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" and various versions of the "12 Days Of Christmas." I'm not as into the silly songs as I used to be, though I wish the local stations would give me the pleasure of hearing "The Chanukah Song" once in awhile, because it still cracks me up. I'm wondering if Adam Sandler has offended Philadelphia in some way, because you never hear that any more.

I do worry that hearing this music for as long a period as we do these days takes away some of the associations I have with it. It used to all coincide: getting a tree, decorating the house, getting people presents, secret Santa candy canes and holiday concerts at school, and hearing these songs here and there on the radio for the first time of the season. The music was almost rationed out, just enough to get you all excited about the holidays, but not too much to overload you. So when I heard a certain song, all those associations came rushing back. Now, while I still love the music, it doesn't seem quite as special or evocative. I'm glad it keeps my kids entertained, but it's flattened out my own memories and made them less powerful.

I'm trying to get excited about the holidays this year, and to make a good effort at creating our own family traditions. The kids are now old enough that we can do fun stuff with them (The tree farm! The Nutcracker! The neighbors' holiday lighting displays involving moving reindeer and inflatable snowmen!) and it means something. Tonight we went to the Holiday Stroll, and both kids raced eagerly up to Santa and hopped up on his knee to tell him their Christmas wishes. This is pretty major, because just the sight of the jolly old soul across the room was enough to induce paralysis last year, and our one attempt to take Melrose to see Santa the year before resulted in tears and hysteria.

Melrose was excited to report afterward that "Mommy, Santa says he has lots of Barbies at the North Pole!" That's all she wants. Magoo, meanwhile, has asked for balls, books, and dinosaurs. We will certainly enjoy the small scale of Santa's haul for this Christmas, not only because our outlay will be pretty small, but because it doesn't take much to please them.

I look back at Laura Ingalls Wilder's account of Christmases of her childhood, and the ecstasy she and her sister felt over receiving homemade rag dolls on one Christmas, and a tin cup, a sugar cake, and a penny on another. There is such a beautiful simplicity in their small celebrations and the sense that each little gift was kept carefully and cherished for years to come. One of the things I loved most about those books was their detailed descriptions of each treasured possession. This family didn't have much, but they appreciated what they did have, and Laura remembered these things in exquisite detail as she wrote her books at sixty-something years of age. In a society as cluttered with throwaway junk as we are, it's a refreshing look back to how things could be, and maybe should be.