Entirely for Pleasure

Sheila York


I hope you’ve had fun this holiday season. I mean, some real enjoyment, not just relief that it’s over.

I hope you weren’t too hard on yourself for not having done all the things no mortal man or woman could possibly get done in six weekends.

Holiday time is always tight for me. Not only do I have a second career, but my book generally has also reached the point where I’m starting to obsess that I won’t make my deadline. It got tighter this season. I was going to have to spend extra-long days at the office, training a new colleague, so I had to make a choice.

Pressure myself to get everything done that I never get done any other year anyway. Or carve out some fun in the time I had.

I opted for fun. 

I didn’t send cards. I enjoy getting them, but I don’t miss the ones I don’t get. Because I was working late at the office, it would have meant hours of weekend time.  Maybe I’ll send Happy Winter cards in January. Maybe I won’t.

I culled the gift list. I went to my favorite mall, the Short Hills Mall. It’s beautiful, wide sparkling aisles and plenty of assistance. I went, I shopped. I left before noon.

We got a tree at a lot where the Fraser firs are fragrant and full, and keep their needles. 

We decorated the house. Who would have figured I'd fall in love with gold-spangled garland?  

I wrapped the presents I bought. I like to wrap gifts. I like heavy foil paper that creases sharply, and wide, wired ribbon tied in enormous bows. Extra fun with a nice cup of hot buttered rum and a vintage holiday movie on the DVR.

I spent a few weekend hours in theaters with movies I wanted to see – The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything (yes, I heeded the call of the British biopic); Gone Girl; Whiplash; Birdman

At home, I watched Guardians of the Galaxy. Twice.

I went into New York City to see the WWOW Radio troupe, who perform old time radio mysteries as if they were being broadcast live. I got to see/hear 1940s holiday episodes of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade.

One of my happy places at the holidays
when it's not loaded down with food and surrounded by friends

We invited a friend to a Thanksgiving sleepover, and two more came in mid-December for a quiet dinner party. Hours at the table. No cellphones. Plenty of conversation. None of it about work.

I went to a couple of bigger parties, too.

First, the Revels, the annual holiday party of the Mystery Writers of America’s New York chapter. Afterward, a rowdy bunch of us—what can I say? Writers & an open bar—went over to Annamaria’s and laughed ourselves silly (while being plied with platters of delicious cookies and more wine).

Then, my other career’s holiday party, the one I haven’t gone to in years because I always just had to finish up unfinished work before year-end. Bah, not this year! 

I was tapped to judge the Hideous Holiday Sweater contest. I wasn’t sure whether this was because they associated my ability to spot a dangling participle with discernment or they figured I was familiar with hideous clothing. 

I had one of my favorite editor moments of the year at that party, a story I will tell you in just a bit.

Last Sunday, we brunched at a neighbor’s house, and nobody left till dark.

Last night, we went across the street to friends. We brought the appetizers—a savory tart of apple, shallots and blue cheese + bacon-wrapped stuffed dates. The host's mother brought 3 desserts.



David and I splurged on gifts this year. For the last three years, the budget’s been tight while we paid off a jaw-droppingly expensive new roof. 

Our paid-for non-leaking roof

The roof has plenty of sharp slopes and angles, and none of the previous owners of my hundred-year-old house had bothered to strip off any earlier shingling. 

And there was the expense of the tree that landed in our backyard during Hurricane Irene and destroyed my garage. But that’s behind us now, and we got a bit naughty with the bank account.

Now, the story.

Background: In my other career, I’m a financial editor and I review research reports for compliance with certain rules. I can’t describe it much more than that. Not because it’s a secret but because whenever I try, people’s eyes glaze over. 

Editors are the sort of people who can sit around and discuss the proper use of possessive and accusative pronouns with gerunds and be happy as clams.

Some of the best people
to have a company party with; the guy in the center,
 over my right shoulder, is the one with the typo sweater 

At the research group’s holiday party, I was sitting at the bar with two of the better writers I work with (let’s call them Mike and Jim, because those are their names). 

Jim has just got engaged; Mike was particularly proud of having found a seasonal sweater with a typo on it, so he could quiz me (New Years Eve). 

Another guy strolled over, gestured to himself and the two other men. He said to me, "Between us, who’s got the worst grammar?”  

I said, “Well, first off, it’s ‘among’.” 

Mike and Jim laughed so hard, they almost fell off their chairs. To be fair, the other guy—let’s call him Calvin—thought it was pretty funny, too.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, I have lived this holiday season entirely for pleasure.



Sheila York
©2014

Yes, Stephanie, There is a Santa Claus (And He’s a Capitalist)

I never caught my mommy kissing Santa Claus, but the two of them did seem to spend a lot of time on the phone. They were definitely tight. As Christmas drew near, my mother would say to me, “Oh, Santa called today. He wanted you to know that a lot of kids want a Slinky this year so you might have to wait until after the holiday to get one.”

“Santa would visit after Christmas?” I asked.

“No, he’s too busy getting ready for the next year but he’ll see it gets to you.”

One year mom said, “Santa called to talk about something you asked for but he also wanted to know if you wanted a doll this year. I’ve told him before that you usually ignore your dolls after a week or two. He says he has some really special books this year.”

Tiny narcissist that I was I basked in the glow of Santa’s tender concern for the quality of my Christmas. It didn’t seem strange to me at all that Santa took time to call my mother at work.

Then there was the year I saw the Casper the Friendly Ghost Christmas cartoon. Casper was busily getting gifts together for poor children. I was disturbed by it and turned to my mother after it was over.

“Santa doesn’t visit poor kids?”

There was a flash of something, perhaps panic, in my mother’s eyes.

“Why wouldn’t he visit poor kids?”

My mother sighed. “Well, Santa does have to be paid.”

“The milk and cookies aren’t enough?" (The father of one of my friends saw that Santa got a single malt Scotch)

The fact that “the right jolly old elf” demanded money was shocking to me. My parents weren’t rich and I always got quite a few Christmas gifts. One year I got both Barbie and Chatty Kathy.

In fairness to my mother, I have to admit that she staunchly denied ever telling me that Santa had to be paid. She would counter my accusation by reminding me that I had accused her of killing my first childhood pet, Kippy, a parakeet. I don't remember that at all.

I did finally get her to admit there wasn’t a Santa Claus.

“Are you upset?” she asked.

“I guess not,” I said. Some clueless doctor had told my parents that my disability made me "frail and high strung" so I always tried not to get upset.

Years later I was doing a psychotherapy session with the single father of a little boy.

Little Tommy wanted to discuss his Christmas list. Dad was saying he couldn’t have everything on the list. He handed me the list. In one column was the name of the toy, in the second column, its price.

No one had to tell him that Santa expected money.

© 2014 Stephanie Patterson

Christmas Traditions

Happy holidays, folks. This is usually the day when I contemplate my seasonal affective disorder, but it isn't bothering me this year, for some reason. Maybe I outgrew it. Hey, the sun is shining! All my Christmas presents are bought! What could be nicer?

So instead of griping about being depressed I thought I'd talk about traditional Christmas activities that my family and other families have indulged in over the years, things I've seen and heard about that charm me. The latest belongs to my dentist's assistant. Christmas Pajamas.

When she and her husband were very young and her little boy was a baby, they hadn't much money for presents, so they agreed to give each other a pair of pajamas. On Christmas Eve they came home from church, opened their pajamas, put them on, and wore them all through Christmas day. They still do this. All three of them open their pajamas on Christmas Eve and wear them all day on Christmas, even going out to visit the wife's sister and her family (who may also be wearing their own Christmas pajamas. The practice is spreading).

Our family has a tradition of opening one present on Christmas Eve, though I never thought of pajamas. This tradition began many years ago in Woodbury, New Jersey, when my Dad was serving in the navy in Camden and we rented the downstairs half of a house. The landlords, the Harneys, lived in the upstairs half. Mrs. Harney, a very sweet woman, had a boy of her own but no daughters, and so she was pleased to wrap up girlie presents and give them to my sister and me on Christmas Eve. We opened them by candlelight. I still remember some of the things she gave me, an interlocking set of wooden doll furniture that you could take apart like a puzzle and put in the doll house, a pair of four-inch porcelain dolls dressed up like a bride and groom, or it might have been Fred and Ginger, in evening clothes. I still had them after we moved to Illinois, where I loved them to pieces.

In Illinois our neighbors, the Fuldes, hosted a huge family party every Christmas. One of the features of this gathering was the awarding of the Cow Plate. It was a dinner-sized plate hand-painted with a picture of a Holstein standing in a field. To be given the Cow Plate was an honor, signifying some great achievement of the previous year, getting married, having a baby, buying a farm, or whatever the Fuldes and Bainbridges could think of to merit the plate. It was not a thing of beauty. That was part of the fun. I dimly recall that the ceremony was accompanied by a chorus of "Roll Out the Barrel." I had a crush on one of the Bainbridge cousins, and so they let me hang around.

To be in love at Christmastime is the best tradition, I think. And to have a baby lying under the tree. Harold and I put John under the tree for his first Christmas while we opened presents. He was about six weeks old. He slept through it all, and so he doesn't remember any of it. But I do.

© 2014 Kate Gallison

Regifting the Holiday Movie

This season, I decided to do something radical. Rather than obsess about all the decoration and holiday cards and cleaning and baking I never had a chance of getting done, I would spend more time having real holiday cheer. 

I'd go out to dinner, have people over, meet for drinks. Get together with friends.  

Here are a few, from my other career's holiday party Wednesday night, some of them worthy contenders in the Most Hideous Christmas Sweater contest, which I got to judge. Yes, that's me in the elfin cap. 

I opted for fun this year. And a lot less stress.

I don't normally re-gift, but this year, I was busy enjoying myself, and I decided to re-gift a blog.  

Last November, I shared my top 5 holiday film recommendations. 

And if on this last Thursday before Christmas, you're still obsessing about what will never get done, you might want to throw in the holiday towel -- the one that you have to remember to wash separately or it turns your husband's undershorts pink -- and have a little fun. 

Sheila York

A List Without the Pressure (November 2013)

I know. Already you’re behind. Back in July, you made a list of all the things you’d do for the holidays, back when you thought you’d suddenly turn super-human. You bought a glue gun, for heaven’s sake, because you just knew you’d have time to make wreaths and centerpieces and hand-made cards. You’d have plenty of time to clean; heck, you’d refinish the floors. You’d find a very special new side dish that would become a family classic. You'd be worshiped. Your holiday table would look like a magazine and you wouldn’t say one harsh word to your sister even though her idea of helping is standing in the kitchen door with a dish towel.

Okay. Put down that list and back away. Nobody has to get hurt here.

You need a new list, that’s all. Just like when you have to exchange a gift because, while your mom is a dear sweet soul, she still tries to dress you in pink argyle.

Here’s what you’re going to do. Find a movie and watch it. And you’re only going to be interrupted if you want to be, maybe by trips to the kitchen for a snack reload. You’re going to turn off the phone and the tablet, and throw a tree skirt over them; then send the kids to their friends’ houses. I’m sure their parents would love visitors this time of year. Tell everybody you’re going to spend an evening watching something that doesn’t have a promo creeping onto your screen telling you to watch something later, instead of enjoying what you’re watching now.

But what to watch? Here’s where the new list comes in. 

There are plenty of classic Christmas tales that show up over the holidays, and show up and show up and show up: A Christmas Story; It’s a Wonderful Life; Miracle on 34th Street; Home Alone; White Christmas (described by a friend as “the whitest musical ever made”); and umpteen versions of Christmas Carol.

But, while I was not thinking about whether I can spatchcock a 14-pound turkey or bake five sides at five temperatures in two ovens, I went back through dozens of films set during the holidays and made a list of some of the ones I’d like to spend time and calories on.

See if there’s anything on it for you.

My final list is eclectic, but then I love all kinds of films. It might be tilted a bit toward period movies, because that’s where I live most of my creative life, with my heroine screenwriter. In addition, my picks were influenced by availability. I would have recommended Remember the Night (Barbara Stanwyck & Fred MacMurray), but it’s not easy to get hold of. You can catch it, however, December 17 on Turner Movie Classics.

Here we go. A few picks, in reverse order of preference, for your consideration.

5. The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)
Bette Davis, Monty Wooley
Written by Julius and Philip Epstein, based on the play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart; Directed by William Keighley

Sheridan Whiteside, famous wit, radio host and literary critic, takes over the small-town Ohio home of local leading citizens when he’s temporarily confined to a wheelchair after falling on their icy steps during a speaking tour. Gloriously spoiled and self-centered, he commands the household, manipulates lives without a second thought, and entertains an eccentric parade of visitors, many of whom were based on real life celebrities such as Noel Coward, Harpo Marx and Gertrude Lawrence. [Alexander Woollcott was the real-life inspiration for Whiteside.] 

Played by Monty Wooley without pulling punches, Whiteside is a tyrant used to adoration and obedience. But when he goes too far and threatens the happiness of his secretary, who’s fallen for a local Joe, he — for Christmas Day at least — is forced to consider the consequences of his behavior. 

While Bette Davis is pitch-perfect as his uptown-girl secretary, it is not a perfect film. The staging is, well, stagey. And the local Joe is out of his league. (Many otherwise entertaining period films are marred by a weak performance from someone the studio had under contract for their looks.)

Still, it’s a spirited, highly diverting time-capsule glimpse of Broadway legends Kaufman & Hart sending up their celebrity friends and the people who take abuse to be around them.

Try something tart with it, like a tall glass of holiday-red Campari and soda.

If you’re not drinking, something salty, like peanut brittle.

4. Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan
Written by Lionel Houser and Adele Comandini; Directed by Peter Godfrey

Leave your logic out in the cold, make yourself a hot buttered rum, curl up and enjoy Barbara Stanwyck in this screwball tale of a popular homemaking & food writer who enraptures readers with magazine articles full of blissful details about her perfect life on a Connecticut farm — all of which is a total fraud. Elizabeth Lane, the envy of millions of American women, lives is a New York apartment and can’t boil an egg. Because she loaned him money to buy his restaurant, a local chef has been dishing her recipes while she invents the rest.

When her publisher (unaware of her deception — I told you, leave the logic outside) decides it would be great publicity for her to entertain a naval war hero for the holidays, she has to scramble to find what she needs, beginning with a farm in Connecticut, someone to pass as her husband, and a baby.

Dennis Morgan, popular as both a singer and actor in his career, in thoroughly winning as the sailor she falls for, and their forbidden attraction (remember, she’s supposed to be perfectly married) gives this light entertainment some heart. Sidney Greenstreet as her publisher, determined to get off his doctor-mandated diet and get some of her famous cooking, and SZ Sakall, as the anxious chef trying to derail the heroine’s pending marriage to the wrong man, add fine decorative touches to this holiday package.

3. Die Hard (1988)
Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, Alan Rickman
Written by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza, based on a novel by Roderick Thorp; Directed by John McTiernan

McTiernan’s shatter-the-glass spectacle is over the top in so many ways. But most of them work, thanks to the confluence of McTiernan’s taut direction, the source material from Roderick Thorp, and the lead performances — Bruce Willis at his wise-acre best; Bonnie Bedelia, who makes a complete character out of a mostly reactive role; and Alan Rickman as the masterfully smooth villain. [Don’t tell me J.K. Rowling didn’t change the nature of Severus Snape after seeing Rickman’s performance in the first Harry Potter film.]

You probably know the plot. You’ve seen variations of it tried dozens of times since: supposed terrorists hijack an entire building in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve and demand a fortune to release their hostages. Only a New York detective, accidentally there while visiting his estranged wife, stands in their way. 

After a long day of holiday shopping, set out a good bottle of whiskey and a big bowl of caramel corn, and remind yourself — even when the stubborn stupidity of upper-echelon law enforcement reps and the trite portrayal of journalists begin to grate — why action film makers have been trying and failing for decades to match Die Hard’s impact.

To this day when a building blows up on screen, David and I say (often in unison): “We’re gonna need a shitload of screen doors.”

2. We’re No Angels (1955)
Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, Aldo Ray
Written by Ranald MacDougall, based on a play by Albert Husson; Directed by Michael Curtiz

It’s not often you get light-hearted and Devil’s Island in the same sentence, let alone in a holiday film.

Three convicts escape the Devil’s Island prison and insinuate themselves into the lives of a sweet, but bumbling local shop-keeper, his wife and their daughter, with robbery in mind to fund their trip off the island. While perfecting their plan, they discover their intended victims are facing ruin at the hands of an officious, but respectable relative who considers it just good business to throw them out and break the daughter’s heart by forbidding her to marry his son.

What are criminals to do? With a blithe disregard for traditional morality, they dispense their own justice, and disarm you completely while they’re doing it.

Bogart holds his own, toe to toe, with Ustinov in snappy patter and droll asides. And Aldo Ray as their young, amoral pal is a grand foil for them both. [You should catch Ray’s brilliant performance as the dim-witted boxer in the Tracy & Hepburn vehicle Pat and Mike. The man didn’t get to make enough good movies.]

I think you need to munch on some old fashioned sugar cookies for this one, and open a bottle of something sparkling.



Now we get to my #1s. Yes, two of them.

Your choice here depends on whether you’d like a holiday story about love or a really dysfunctional family.

1. The Lion in Winter
Peter O’Toole, Katherine Hepburn
Written by James Goldman, based on his play; Directed by Anthony Harvey

First, big thanks to Annamaria, who reminded me about this classic film. We were chatting about our holiday favorites, and she said, “Lion in Winter.” I laughed out loud. Then immediately realized how brilliant a choice that was and decided to steal (uh, homage) the idea.

Acting doesn’t get much better than O’Toole and Hepburn as King Henry II and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. Once passionate for each other, his affairs and her conspiracies have turned love’s flame into a relentless desire to immolate the other. After years confined by the king for her attempts to overthrow him, Eleanor is invited to spend Christmas 1183 at court and together as a family — and what a family. Two parents and three sons feasting on treachery, all plotting to manipulate the others and control who will be named Henry’s heir.

Beyond the two leads, there’s the treat of seeing Anthony Hopkins long before the fava beans and nice Chianti as son Richard; a naughty, deceitful turn by Timothy Dalton as the king of France; and the frustration of John Castle as son Geoffrey, who is every bit as conniving as the others, but can’t figure out why no one wants him on the throne. You might find the characterization of son John a bit off-putting, to put it mildly. Henry’s determination to name this filthy and not-too-bright scoundrel his heir is only explicable because Richard is a bit too close to mommy, who encouraged him to lead rebellions.

But oh my, when O’Toole and Hepburn parry and thrust with Goldman’s bright, bracing dialog, the sky lights up.

You’ll need something to keep you warm though. Lion in Winter also does a terrific job of showing that winter in a medieval castle was, figuratively and literally, not for the thin-skinned. So maybe a throw rug and big mug of mulled wine.

Of course the heat of the constant family friction might help a little.

Outside of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, no film couple has been so dysfunctional and so riveting.

1. While You Were Sleeping (1995)
Sandra Bullock, Bill Pullman, Jack Warden
Written by Daniel G. Sullivan and Fredric LeBow; Directed by Jon Turteltaub

This film is first-line proof of the adage that 90% of directing is casting.

Lucy is a lonely young woman (and a bit of a recluse) who longs for love while selling tokens in a Chicago transit booth. She fantasizes about a future with a handsome lawyer (Peter Gallagher) she sees every day on the platform, and when he’s accidentally shoved off it and knocked unconscious by thieves on Christmas Day, she jumps onto the tracks to save him. At the hospital, where he remains in a coma, a nurse overhears her musing “I was going to marry him,” and, quickly, not only has Lucy been ushered to the man’s side but also embraced by his family as his fiancée. Then she meets his bother.

It’s a credit to the director Turteltaub, Bullock and Warden (as the family’s longtime friend who knows her secret) that you’ll buy why she can’t tell them the truth, over and over. And the actors playing the wacky members of the family pull real people out of what on the page would look hokey and jokey. The cast even manages to beat back the efforts of the musical score to tip your insulin balance.

Bullock and Pullman are at the top of their game, and love unfolds quietly and naturally. The scene between the two ought-to-be lovers on the slippery pavement in front of her apartment is a classic.

You have to have chocolate for this one, maybe a whole chocolate cake. And in honor of that scene, how about a little ice wine to go with it?





Sheila York

Copyright 2013, Sheila York

Christmas in Gallisonland, Part Two

Christmas mailings.

Folks, I am so old that not only do I remember when you could send out a Christmas card for three cents, but I remember the postman coming to the door with a package on Christmas day. Yes, a delivery from the United States Postal Service on Christmas day. It was a box from my great-aunt Billie in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Ten dollars in import duties had to be forked over before we could have it. When we opened it the box contained a Mister Potato Head and a few other trifles. But it was good to be remembered. Billie always did her best to keep Christmas.

And so do I. When I was a teen-ager at home, that meant helping my mother prepare the gifts to be mailed to the many relatives in Canada and Maine. She sold me on the idea that I was the most creative one at wrapping packages, although her own favorite wrapping, that which her presents had come wrapped in when she was a child, was white tissue paper, Christmas stickers, and ribbon. Most of you have probably never seen those stickers, it strikes me. They were printed with Santa faces and angels and things. You had to lick them. They tasted bad.

My style of package-wrapping in those days was to study the Ladies' Home Journal for the latest in wrapping styles and then big-deal my mother into buying fancy ribbon and shiny paper, carefully color-coordiated, which would be all used up in the distant relatives' presents before we got around to the immediate family, so that what we had under our own tree was often quite plain. I grew skilled at curling that new curlable ribbon with the edge of a table knife. I was never any good at tying bows, no matter what my mother said. Everything had to be in the mail by December tenth, I think it was, or maybe it was the fifteenth. One was required to wrap international packages in brown paper and tie them with string, so that bureaucratic customs tags might be attached.

The Christmas season ran on a very strict schedule in those days: the sending of cards, the buying, wrapping, and mailing of gifts, the baking of cookies, the decorating of the house, the putting up of the tree, the hanging of ornaments, the putting-together of toys late, late on Christmas Eve. Maybe it still does, for many people. In our house, not so much anymore. I'm always behindhand with the cards, partly out of a terror of having them returned "address unknown" or "deceased." The old beloved Canadian relatives have all died off, although thanks be to God I have new ones. The children are grown and gone. No late-night toy assembly. We have no fireplace in our little cardboard row house, so there's no place for Christmas candles. Poinsettias and massive swags of Christmas greens bring on my asthma. There are no free flat surfaces to display the creche.

Still I do my best to keep Christmas. This year I had all the presents rounded up by December seventh. On the tenth I began coughing and wheezing, but we put up a tree just the same, a nice big live tree, fragrant. I got kind of tired after hanging half the ornaments, but it looks just fine like it is. On the thirteenth I went to the doctor, who diagnosed me with acute bronchitis and prescribed a number of drugs. By the seventeenth I felt worse. I made an afternoon appointment to go back to the doctor. "Maybe I have pneumonia," I thought to myself. "Maybe she'll send me to the hospital. Maybe I'll even die there. I'd better get this box of presents off to John." My youngest son is in Olympia, Washington, half a world away. I wrapped the presents hastily and carried the box across the street to the Post Office.

The freight was forty-three dollars because the package was big, though light. I could have done better by putting it in the car and taking it to the UPS Store across the river but I was too sick to make the trip, so off it went. Harold drove me to the doctor and sat in the waiting room for an hour and a half while the health care professionals gave me breathing treatments to quiet the noises in my chest enough so that they could tell by listening whether or not my lungs were involved. A terrible snowstorm was falling by the time we headed up to the hospital to get my chest X-rayed, turning a normal journey of twenty minutes into something much longer and more unpleasant. But, hurray! I didn't have pneumonia.

We picked up some more drugs and arrived home in time to cobble together a late dinner. As I was taking the second bite I suddenly realized I had sent John's package to the wrong address. Instead of saying such-and-such a street, NE, I had written SE. Or it might have been the other way around.

What a dunce! I had ruined everything! Half a world away the evil clowns of the United States Postal Service, chuckling, would cast my carefully-selected gifts into the dead letter office, or worse, onto the porch of some strange lowlife on the other side of town who would sell them for drugs. Christmas was ruined. It was all my fault. I took a pill and coughed.

Last night John called to tell me the package had arrived. God bless the Post Office, those sweet angels. I can keep my Christmas in peace now. You'll be happy to know that I'm feeling a lot better, and Merry Christmas to you, too.

© 2013 Kate Gallison

Christmas in Gallisonland, Part One

Time for the annual contemplation of Christmases past.

Today we revisit the days when I used to work as a seasonal employee in various retail establishments. My very first job (other than babysitting) was selling glassware in a big variety store in Plainfield, New Jersey. The high school employment office arranged it. The tedium of the work experience kind of got to me, the music they played all the time over and over, not just Christmas stuff but pop music that couldn't bear quite as much repetition as we were forced to suffer. I can't hear The Great Pretender without smelling brown wrapping paper and store dust. Oh, oh, oh, yesss, I'm the great, prete-enderrr…

Getting paid was excellent, though. I spent all my pay on presents, a pink sweater for my sister, a necklace of gold-colored beads for my mother, although my father warned me that I should get in the habit of saving it. My supervisor, a fusty old lady, used to be mildly annoying, but she gave me a handkerchief with purple flowers on it on my last day at work. I still have that handkerchief. It's strange what sticks to you and what slips away.

One thing I wish I still had was the training package issued by John Wanamaker's in Philadelphia the year I worked in their ribbon and button department, right under the famous Eagle. Three mimeographed sheets of do's and don'ts. Even the seasonal employees went through two days of training before they were allowed on the floor. They taught us to be classy sales clerks. Each morning just before the store opened we stood at our stations while the store chimes played a little tune, almost like the company song that everyone stands and sings in the Japanese factories.

Esprit de corps. We knew we were Wanamaker's clerks, there to serve the customers with as much intelligence and good humor as we could muster. Every day there was a concert of Christmas music on the famous Wanamaker organ, right over our heads, and huge crowds would jam the aisles so that we didn't even have to do any work, since the customers couldn't get to us through the crush. The music was a far cry from The Great Pretender.

Some years later I found myself, a young married person, selling toys in a now-defunct department store in Trenton. I fell desperately in love with a Madame Alexander baby doll they had for sale, so life-like, but at thirty dollars it was out of my price range. What I actually wanted, deep down, was a real baby, but that's a story for another day.

The fun of that job was finding just the right toy for fond parents and grandparents to buy for the little ones. Or it would have been, if the little ones hadn't been clamoring for a lot of dispiriting plastic crap they had seen on television. "I can make a better dressing table than this in my workshop," one father complained. "Don't you think she would like it just as well?" In thirty years, yes, when you're in your grave and she looks back on the work of your hands and all you did for her. Right now, though, she expects the overpriced Paint-me-Pretty pink plastic dressing table to be waiting under the tree on Christmas morning.

I had kind of a crush on the man in charge of the toy department, a good-looking guy in beautifully tailored suits, the son of the owners. Nothing like my feelings for the Madame Alexander doll, but still it made my heart beat a little faster when he gathered the salesgirls together on Christmas Eve and put his arms around us all. Until he gave his Christmas Eve speech.

"All right, girls," he said. "This is it. Christmas Eve. Anyone who comes in looking for toys will be desperate. They'll buy anything. This is our chance to get rid of all the dreck. Get out there and sell."

© 2013 Kate Gallison

A Christmas List Without the Pressure

I know. Already you’re behind. Back in July, you made a list of all the things you’d do for the holidays, back when you thought you’d suddenly turn super-human. You bought a glue gun, for heaven’s sake, because you just knew you’d have time to make wreaths and centerpieces and hand-made cards. You’d have plenty of time to clean; heck, you’d refinish the floors. You’d find a very special new side dish that would become a family classic. You'd be worshiped. Your holiday table would look like a magazine and you wouldn’t say one harsh word to your sister even though her idea of helping is standing in the kitchen door with a dish towel.

Okay. Put down that list and back away. Nobody has to get hurt here.

You need a new list, that’s all. Just like when you have to exchange a gift because, while your mom is a dear sweet soul, she still tries to dress you in pink argyle.

Here’s what you’re going to do. Find a movie and watch it. And you’re only going to be interrupted if you want to be, maybe by trips to the kitchen for a snack reload. You’re going to turn off the phone and the tablet, and throw a tree skirt over them; then send the kids to their friends’ houses. I’m sure their parents would love visitors this time of year. Tell everybody you’re going to spend an evening watching something that doesn’t have a promo creeping onto your screen telling you to watch something later, instead of enjoying what you’re watching now.

But what to watch? Here’s where the new list comes in. 

There are plenty of classic Christmas tales that show up over the holidays, and show up and show up and show up: A Christmas Story; It’s a Wonderful Life; Miracle on 34th Street; Home Alone; White Christmas (described by a friend as “the whitest musical ever made”); and umpteen versions of Christmas Carol.

But, while I was not thinking about whether I can spatchcock a 14-pound turkey or bake five sides at five temperatures in two ovens, I went back through dozens of films set during the holidays and made a list of some of the ones I’d like to spend time and calories on.

See if there’s anything on it for you.

My final list is eclectic, but then I love all kinds of films. It might be tilted a bit toward period movies, because that’s where I live most of my creative life, with my heroine screenwriter. In addition, my picks were influenced by availability. I would have recommended Remember the Night (Barbara Stanwyck & Fred MacMurray), but it’s not easy to get hold of. You can catch it, however, December 17 on Turner Movie Classics.

Here we go. A few picks, in reverse order of preference, for your consideration.

5. The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)
Bette Davis, Monty Wooley
Written by Julius and Philip Epstein, based on the play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart; Directed by William Keighley

Sheridan Whiteside, famous wit, radio host and literary critic, takes over the small-town Ohio home of local leading citizens when he’s temporarily confined to a wheelchair after falling on their icy steps during a speaking tour. Gloriously spoiled and self-centered, he commands the household, manipulates lives without a second thought, and entertains an eccentric parade of visitors, many of whom were based on real life celebrities such as Noel Coward, Harpo Marx and Gertrude Lawrence. [Alexander Woollcott was the real-life inspiration for Whiteside.] 

Played by Monty Wooley without pulling punches, Whiteside is a tyrant used to adoration and obedience. But when he goes too far and threatens the happiness of his secretary, who’s fallen for a local Joe, he — for Christmas Day at least — is forced to consider the consequences of his behavior. 

While Bette Davis is pitch-perfect as his uptown-girl secretary, it is not a perfect film. The staging is, well, stagey. And the local Joe is out of his league. (Many otherwise entertaining period films are marred by a weak performance from someone the studio had under contract for their looks.)

Still, it’s a spirited, highly diverting time-capsule glimpse of Broadway legends Kaufman & Hart sending up their celebrity friends and the people who take abuse to be around them.

Try something tart with it, like a tall glass of holiday-red Campari and soda.

If you’re not drinking, something salty, like peanut brittle.

4. Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan
Written by Lionel Houser and Adele Comandini; Directed by Peter Godfrey

Leave your logic out in the cold, make yourself a hot buttered rum, curl up and enjoy Barbara Stanwyck in this screwball tale of a popular homemaking & food writer who enraptures readers with magazine articles full of blissful details about her perfect life on a Connecticut farm — all of which is a total fraud. Elizabeth Lane, the envy of millions of American women, lives is a New York apartment and can’t boil an egg. Because she loaned him money to buy his restaurant, a local chef has been dishing her recipes while she invents the rest.

When her publisher (unaware of her deception — I told you, leave the logic outside) decides it would be great publicity for her to entertain a naval war hero for the holidays, she has to scramble to find what she needs, beginning with a farm in Connecticut, someone to pass as her husband, and a baby.

Dennis Morgan, popular as both a singer and actor in his career, in thoroughly winning as the sailor she falls for, and their forbidden attraction (remember, she’s supposed to be perfectly married) gives this light entertainment some heart. Sidney Greenstreet as her publisher, determined to get off his doctor-mandated diet and get some of her famous cooking, and SZ Sakall, as the anxious chef trying to derail the heroine’s pending marriage to the wrong man, add fine decorative touches to this holiday package.

3. Die Hard (1988)
Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, Alan Rickman
Written by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza, based on a novel by Roderick Thorp; Directed by John McTiernan

McTiernan’s shatter-the-glass spectacle is over the top in so many ways. But most of them work, thanks to the confluence of McTiernan’s taut direction, the source material from Roderick Thorp, and the lead performances — Bruce Willis at his wise-acre best; Bonnie Bedelia, who makes a complete character out of a mostly reactive role; and Alan Rickman as the masterfully smooth villain. [Don’t tell me J.K. Rowling didn’t change the nature of Severus Snape after seeing Rickman’s performance in the first Harry Potter film.]

You probably know the plot. You’ve seen variations of it tried dozens of times since: supposed terrorists hijack an entire building in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve and demand a fortune to release their hostages. Only a New York detective, accidentally there while visiting his estranged wife, stands in their way. 

After a long day of holiday shopping, set out a good bottle of whiskey and a big bowl of caramel corn, and remind yourself — even when the stubborn stupidity of upper-echelon law enforcement reps and the trite portrayal of journalists begin to grate — why action film makers have been trying and failing for decades to match Die Hard’s impact.

To this day when a building blows up on screen, David and I say (often in unison): “We’re gonna need a shitload of screen doors.”

2. We’re No Angels (1955)
Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, Aldo Ray
Written by Ranald MacDougall, based on a play by Albert Husson; Directed by Michael Curtiz

It’s not often you get light-hearted and Devil’s Island in the same sentence, let alone in a holiday film.

Three convicts escape the Devil’s Island prison and insinuate themselves into the lives of a sweet, but bumbling local shop-keeper, his wife and their daughter, with robbery in mind to fund their trip off the island. While perfecting their plan, they discover their intended victims are facing ruin at the hands of an officious, but respectable relative who considers it just good business to throw them out and break the daughter’s heart by forbidding her to marry his son.

What are criminals to do? With a blithe disregard for traditional morality, they dispense their own justice, and disarm you completely while they’re doing it.

Bogart holds his own, toe to toe, with Ustinov in snappy patter and droll asides. And Aldo Ray as their young, amoral pal is a grand foil for them both. [You should catch Ray’s brilliant performance as the dim-witted boxer in the Tracy & Hepburn vehicle Pat and Mike. The man didn’t get to make enough good movies.]

I think you need to munch on some old fashioned sugar cookies for this one, and open a bottle of something sparkling.



Now we get to my #1s. Yes, two of them.

Your choice here depends on whether you’d like a holiday story about love or a really dysfunctional family.

1. The Lion in Winter
Peter O’Toole, Katherine Hepburn
Written by James Goldman, based on his play; Directed by Anthony Harvey

First, big thanks to Annamaria, who reminded me about this classic film. We were chatting about our holiday favorites, and she said, “Lion in Winter.” I laughed out loud. Then immediately realized how brilliant a choice that was and decided to steal (uh, homage) the idea.

Acting doesn’t get much better than O’Toole and Hepburn as King Henry II and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. Once passionate for each other, his affairs and her conspiracies have turned love’s flame into a relentless desire to immolate the other. After years confined by the king for her attempts to overthrow him, Eleanor is invited to spend Christmas 1183 at court and together as a family — and what a family. Two parents and three sons feasting on treachery, all plotting to manipulate the others and control who will be named Henry’s heir.

Beyond the two leads, there’s the treat of seeing Anthony Hopkins long before the fava beans and nice Chianti as son Richard; a naughty, deceitful turn by Timothy Dalton as the king of France; and the frustration of John Castle as son Geoffrey, who is every bit as conniving as the others, but can’t figure out why no one wants him on the throne. You might find the characterization of son John a bit off-putting, to put it mildly. Henry’s determination to name this filthy and not-too-bright scoundrel his heir is only explicable because Richard is a bit too close to mommy, who encouraged him to lead rebellions.

But oh my, when O’Toole and Hepburn parry and thrust with Goldman’s bright, bracing dialog, the sky lights up.

You’ll need something to keep you warm though. Lion in Winter also does a terrific job of showing that winter in a medieval castle was, figuratively and literally, not for the thin-skinned. So maybe a throw rug and big mug of mulled wine.

Of course the heat of the constant family friction might help a little.

Outside of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, no film couple has been so dysfunctional and so riveting.

1. While You Were Sleeping (1995)
Sandra Bullock, Bill Pullman, Jack Warden
Written by Daniel G. Sullivan and Fredric LeBow; Directed by Jon Turteltaub

This film is first-line proof of the adage that 90% of directing is casting.

Lucy is a lonely young woman (and a bit of a recluse) who longs for love while selling tokens in a Chicago transit booth. She fantasizes about a future with a handsome lawyer (Peter Gallagher) she sees every day on the platform, and when he’s accidentally shoved off it and knocked unconscious by thieves on Christmas Day, she jumps onto the tracks to save him. At the hospital, where he remains in a coma, a nurse overhears her musing “I was going to marry him,” and, quickly, not only has Lucy been ushered to the man’s side but also embraced by his family as his fiancée. Then she meets his bother.

It’s a credit to the director Turteltaub, Bullock and Warden (as the family’s longtime friend who knows her secret) that you’ll buy why she can’t tell them the truth, over and over. And the actors playing the wacky members of the family pull real people out of what on the page would look hokey and jokey. The cast even manages to beat back the efforts of the musical score to tip your insulin balance.

Bullock and Pullman are at the top of their game, and love unfolds quietly and naturally. The scene between the two ought-to-be lovers on the slippery pavement in front of her apartment is a classic.

You have to have chocolate for this one, maybe a whole chocolate cake. And in honor of that scene, how about a little ice wine to go with it?



Do you have your own holiday-film favorites? Let’s hear them.

Sheila York

Copyright 2013, Sheila York

53 Shopping Days till Xmas. Buy Witty Tee Shirts.

Halloween is gone and past for another year (without a pumpkin! I forgot to get a pumpkin!). It must surely be time to think about Christmas. Right? And presents. Presents for other people, that is. Be prepared, for a change, that's my motto. What all my friends will probably get this year are paperback copies of BUCKER DUDLEY, whether they want one or not, since that's what I can afford to give them. But if I had twenty-five or thirty bucks apiece for presents for my friends, I could do worse than to get them each a tee-shirt from Zazzle. I was browsing their site this morning and came across some of the most charming things.

For Lesley, in honor of her cat, Mao

For Annamaria, who,
like me, is bothered and
irritated by politics

For Leanne

For Harold (Hey! It's customizable!)

For Lee

For Jonathan Maberry

For Bob

For Thelma

For Stephanie, the demon reader

For Sheila, the film fan

…And one for me, since it's all virtual anyway.

Merry fifty-three days before Christmas.

© 2013 Kate Gallison