We usually eat whatever I feel up to cooking, so this year it is chicken crepes and dilly bread on the 25th. I always make trifle for dessert.

We open gifts Christmas morning after eating the best damn breakfast: omlettes and croissants and fruit and cream in our coffee. I usually have something on the stereo like Diana Krall or Tony Bennet or Van Morrison's, Live At The Grand Opera House.

Every year I think about how much I'd love to have that Bing Crosby and Bowie CD. And every year I scan the tv guide for my favourite Christmas movie, The Man in the Santa Claus Suit, starring Fred Astaire and Gary Burghoff.

Sometimes it even snows.

-- Christine (chris@gta.igs.net), December 21, 1999

Answers

We have Christmas music playing for 24 hours on Christmas day. I love the overdose, because by New Year's Day I have to put all of those great songs away until the 1st of November next year. I've tried playing them in March or June, but they don't sound nearly the same. The other thing I've been doing for too many years to qualify with a number is play basketball at my highschool gym on Boxing Day. It's something my brother and I started when we were still attending, and every year we phone a "bunch of guys", the list always changes a bit every Christmas, and we drift into the school at one o'clock in the afternoon, leaving our snowy boots in the lobby out of respect for the janitors who we all still know by name...there's something strange but familiar about walking down the halls in your sock feet...reminds me off being much younger than I am...and then we pound the hardwood for a few hours and laugh at the funny shots we put up. Everybody plays too hard, trying to make up for the games we haven't played all year, and it's too much fun. I've driven in blinding snowstorms to make it to that game, and I'll do the same this year if required. There's nothing like being part of a perfectly executed give-and-go with my best buddy, my brother.

Merry Christmas, Chris, and thank you for giving us this space to air and share a few good thoughts!

-- Michael (meaford@hotmail.com), December 23, 1999.

New Year's Eve-Watch the ball drop on t.v. and enjoy fake wine.

-- Kali F. (kali21_2000@hotmail.com), September 22, 2002.

New Years Eve-watch the ball drop at midnight while sipping fake wine. Valentine's Day-Mom gets us kids some little gift or candy. St Patties Day-WEAR GREEN or get PINCHED Easter-Color easter eggs and find my big basket of hidden candy.

-- Kali F. (kali21_2000@hotmail.com), September 22, 2002.