It's (Not) Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

I feel like I'm in White Christmas, in that they get to Vermont expecting snow and there isn't anything. In fact, the weather is ridiculously nice. That's pretty much how things are right now. I know by April I'll be sick of snow and the cold, but this time of year it's cold anyway ( I don't care what other people think, 40 is not warm) and snow makes everything pretty. Plus it makes the Christmas season actually feel like Christmas, which currently it doesn't. I just feel like everything and everyone around me is so focused on the consumerism this year and not about the true holiday spirit and the fact that it's Advent and Christmas is about the birth of Christ. Ok, at work it's not so bad, and my family isn't that bad, but I just feel like the general feeling of society and the atmosphere around me is consumer-driven. Eric and I are having a more low-key Christmas this year and we already have nearly everybody's gifts, so we don't even have that much more shopping to do.

We put up our decorations yesterday and it was crazy because Charlotte just kept getting into everything. She's only taken a couple ornaments off the tree so far and we didn't put anything dangerous or breakable at the bottom of the tree. Actually, we didn't really put anything breakable on the tree this year, just in case. The worst part is the Nativity manger. Baby Jesus has been all over our apartment, thrown on the floor, put in her mouth, and who knows what else she's done with it before we've been able to put it back. I actually caught myself saying "Charlotte, we don't eat Jesus" but then I had to correct myself and say, "Well, we do, but not quite like that". Not like she gets it, but Eric thought it was pretty funny.

Even though I'm not quite in the Christmas spirit, I'm happy to have out Christmas decorations and lights up around our apartment and a beautiful tree. Hopefully it will snow a little bit soon so I finally start feeling like it's really Christmastime.

Gaslight

I just finished watching Gaslight today for what has probably been the third or fourth time. The first time I saw it was in a philosophy of film class (one of the best classes I've ever had). Eric and I Netflixed it a couple of times so he could watch it too and so I could watch it again. I love it. It's such a great movie (note: I'm talking about the 1944 version with Ingrid Bergman), so creepy and dramatic. Not creepy in a scary movie kind of way, but creepy in a "my husband is systematically convincing me I'm crazy" kind of way. That's the basic plot--her husband is a bad guy trying to convince her that she is out of her mind and in doing so basically drives her out of her mind. It's really good. The actors are good (Ingrid Bergman won her first Oscar for her role), the plot is good, everything about it is good. Especially if you like old movies, which I do.

The only black and white movie I think I'd ever seen before this film class was "It's a Wonderful Life". That class really opened me up to some classic movies and widened my love of movies to include old movies. The more movies I see coming out these days, the more I am starting to cling to these older ones. Sad, I know, but like I wrote in a previous post, most movies coming out these days are seriously lacking in many ways. Eric and I keep postponing our movie date because there just isn't anything good out, and by the time we find a day that will work the one movie that we actually want to see is pretty much out of the theaters. Go figure.