We had a great time Christmas Day. It was a nice, quiet day which is always a good thing for a holiday. We started off the day with a delicious breakfast. Will made scrambled eggs, sausage, white sausage gravy and homemade biscuits. We opened up presents. It was a very literary Christmas as we both got each other several books. Jeff also got Will a Oscar Wilde action figure, so Oscar can watch over his writing endeavors in the new year.
In terms of entertainment through the day, we, of course, had the WPIX Yule Log on while we opened presents. Later in the day we also watched Pee Wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special, which Will discovered was on the Cartoon Network very early Christmas morning. That was an extra special treat. Earlier this year we watched all of the original episodes of Pee Wee when Cartoon Network started airing them over the summer, so to see the Christmas special too was awesome! The guest stars on it were great, Grace Jones (singing “Little Drummer Boy”), k.d. lang (singing “Jingle Bell Rock”) and others including Little Richard (ice skating), Oprah Winfrey (calling on the picture phone), Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon (making Christmas cards for Pee Wee), Dinah Shore (singing “12 Days of Christmas” and making up about 40 new days) and lots more. If you missed it, check it out on DVD sometime. We also watched the Grey Gardens documentary since we’d just seen the musical. The production team of the musical did an amazing job recreating the mansion, the furnishings, the clothing and the actresses also did great work bringing the Beales to life.
For our Christmas movie, it was The Queen. Sure, it wasn’t a holiday movie, but we’d been wanting to see it since it first came out weeks ago and we finally did it. Talk about a tour de force from Helen Mirren. To see her on the screen is to see the Queen because the transformation is so complete. It’s a very moving look at the back and forth between Tony Blair, the Queen and the people of England in the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death. It is called a fictional recreation, but you have to wonder how much of it could have actually happened!
We capped off Christmas with a great, pretty traditional dinner: turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and corn. It was a great day, and we hope everyone else had a great day too!