Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

Spiking the Eggnog

I prefer my winter holidays with a bit of bite--a little spiked eggnog, if you will. And though I personally don't own a single pair of Christmas socks, a holiday scarf, or even a light-up Rudolph brooch, the sartorial choices of others are not mine to judge. The Oregonian's Grant Butler recently confessed to a conversion to the cult of the Christmas sweater after a holiday party that featured prizes for the ugliest sweater. He came in third, but his devotion to holiday kitsch lives on. Send in your own pictures or just chuckle in delight at the reader participation slide show!

As far as my mom is concerned, It's a Wonderful Life is the best holiday movie of all time. And despite my impatience with sappy Christmas miracles, I can't help but tear up at the story of George Bailey. I blame my mother. Luckily, I have a back-up holiday film tradition that won't make me grab for the hankies, but still serves up a satisfying holiday story. In La Bûche, a funeral brings together a French family of grown sisters and their long-divorced parents who may be even more unhappy at the holiday than you are. An ensemble piece that follows the family members through uncovering old secrets, flirting with new loves, and revealing infidelities (it is French, after all), this film is just bitter enough to help me get through this season of schmaltz.

Opening John Grossman's collection of cards and ephemera in Christmas Curiosities: Odd, Dark, and Forgotten Christmas feels like opening a box of holiday ornaments that has been wired with a time bomb. All your ideas about the beauty and purity of Christmas will explode when you get to the end of this book--no, it won't even take that long. Have you ever heard of Krampus? The incubus-like creature that beats and kidnaps children? How about images of lecherous Santas, or mean-looking Santas, so unlike our jolly version of the kindly red-suited man. Get your fill of naughty children, dead birds, and other Victorian-era nasties in this book that might just crush your holiday spirit.

I certainly wouldn't recommend the short story collection Holidays on Ice to everyone. Though the story "SantaLand Diaries" has become a modern holiday classic, these stories are not for the "Christmas is a magical time" believers. Holiday pragmatists only need apply. It probably reveals a lot about me, then, that one of my most cherished holiday memories involves one of these David Sedaris stories. One year, I was lonely and away from home until well after Thanksgiving when a friend called to read a Christmas story to me over the phone. He couldn't wait to share the story "Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!", a satirical look at one family's annual Christmas letter. Throughout the letter recounting the absurd challenges of the previous year, the matriarch of the family maintains her perky tone. A good dysfunctional family story is the perfect antidote to homesickness.