League Assignment: Merry Nerdmas!

Merry Geekmas! Write or photograph something festive and pop culture oriented.

Me uncomprehendingly holding the coolest Transformer ever...I can imagine my mother
telling me "don't open this until you get home"

This week's assignment is pretty open ended.  I always tend to over think the orders coming in on the pop culture wire by immediately pondering how to set up my figures in a manger scene or something in a strictly literal sense but as I continued to think, it just came to me.   I'm going to try to highlight some of the best Christmas related memories I can that came from this special time of year.  It all kicks off with a great "midnight" (8PM) liturgy that truly is a celebration of the faith with an unparalleled feeling of joy that really cannot be matched.  Then its time for the mad rush home, setting up the house, watching St. Patrick's real midnight mass in NYC on TV and having some kielbasi, cheese and wine.  This is all after hanging at my aunts for her Christmas eve blowout.   I have an absolutely huge extended family with four dozen aunts, uncles and cousins.  Holidays such as this were always big time events with a lot of parties, games and of course, toys.



Spydor and Snake Mountain...hell to the yeah!

There were many years that I could sum up as Ghostbuster, MASK, Ninja Turtles or He-Man Christmases.  Being an only child during this holiday certainly possessed its perks.   Even befoer I knew what an action figure was, I was making out like a bandit and it only fostered and grew my passion for plastic and paint as the years went on up to today.  I must admit even my list (not that I have too many people shopping for me anymore) have a few amazon items with the Star Wars label on it and my wife earned her official "spouse of the year" award last year when she scored me a Cobra Moray Hydrofoil, Night Raven and Sky Striker AND got me a Tomahawk for my birthday...wonderful lady, honest to God.

Ghostbusters??? Who is this guerilla???

Besides those amazing toys and items, my best gifts I ever received were my G1 Jetfire with Macross logos I received when I was 4...(if only I still had that baby)...My Ninja Turtles Sewer Playset.....My Ecto-1 and Firehouse Playset and my vintage AT-AT Walker in box my dad snagged at a yardsale for 50 bucks.  Notice a trend here...I was a playset kid that's for sure...  The SNES along with Final Fight and Super Mario World was hands down the best system I ever received and I cried when it was destroyed in the flood of 2005...I did get a replacement but really it just isn't the same.

If you can only watch one thing this holiday season, make a trip to puppetland!

 

The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock and Sesame Street For the Win!

You gotta admit, holiday specials were the bomb growing up as well...my wife and I make a point to do our rounds of the various 80's properties...I loved the Real Ghostbusters Christmas episode with the Christmas Carol Ghosts, the Garfield Special, Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas...hell, I just this second finished watching the Pee-Wee's Christmas Special!  To this day  the muppets medley at the end of the Muppet Family Christmas brings me to tears...(the overwhelming love and kindness of the muppets, Jim Henson and John Denver's music just bust my heart at its' seams, I'm sorry!)
Frosty is great in his horribly cheap and ridiculousness...Peanuts Gang always make me smile...until the "get me a dog, Charlie Brown" or whatever comes on right after or whatever hip poochy-esqu, crappy, Pixar junk gets shoehorned in for "today's kids"...whatevs.   Decorating is a blast as we decorate cookies..I suck at it so my gingerbread men rapidly turn into gingerbread zombies and victims...lotta red frosting if you get my drift while It's a Wonderful Life makes me misty in the background.

and Good Boy and Bad Boy and Oh Boy and Atta Boy...

Really...I love Halloween, Thanksgiving is a blast, Easter is the most important spiritually but Christmas just has so many positive factors, memories and traditions all wrapped into one.  Nothing else can duplicate the feeling I get during Christmas that makes all the preparation quite so easily worth it!  Now that we have a little guy on the way in January, I cannot wait to be the one to give out the experience to somebody new!  Merry Christmas, Merry Nerdmas, Happy Holidays to you all!

Check the Cool and Collected page for some more Christmas memories, stories and adventures!