theparkerfamily

The quick brown fox jumped over the good, but lazy Parker family.

musings: a tale of twenty-two parties

Wednesday, 19 December 2007

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Ah, ’tis the season of love, joy, and parties. This year, we have two work parties each, two more parties at our house, a couple trips to the theater, and about half a dozen happy hours between us.

Not that I am complaining, but I actually had to stop commuting to work via bicycle in mid-December, because we have something just about every day after work for the last two weeks before Christmas. Thank God we finished up our Christmas shopping in late November, or a lot of people would be getting a whole-lotta nothing.

The highlight so far — for us, at least — was the Christmas Cartoon Extravaganza. Each year we collect as many television Christmas specials as we can, and throw a party where they are playing in the background. Our place is a bit small, but we managed to cram in twelve people to watch three and a half hours of pure animated Christmas goodness, including A Charlie Brown Christmas, Frosty Returns, Robbie the Reindeer, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends christmas special, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

I think this is only the second or third time the lady sparkler and I have thrown the Extravaganza, but I have done something similar on and off for the last decade. I wish I could take credit for the notion, but the idea originally came from a Theatre Department tradition at the College of William and Mary where people gathered each year and managed to turn How the Grinch Stole Christmas into a drinking game.

The basic premise of the College version was to drink each time you hear the word “Who” — as in “All the Who’s down in Whoville” and “Cindy Lou Who who was no more than two.” As you can imagine, the “winner” was essentially declared by the first commercial break by looking around at whomever was still standing.

Fortunately, the thirty-something version entailed just sitting on the couch and thinking warm thoughts of friends and family, though we did “go crazy” by slipping some peppermint schnapps into the cocoa.