Annual OS Christmas Thread 2024

[mike24forever]

As I sit here under the glow of one of our 3 Christmas trees, my mind was drawn to this thread. We are 35 days out from the big day and the excitement in our house is growing. The kids are now 8 and 5 years of age and are at the perfect age for the magic of the season.

We all start celebrating this holiday at different times. I know my American friends have Thanksgiving next week, and that’s the jumping off point for many of them. For me, your Thanksgiving is such a huge part of Christmas to me, so please accept my apologies for jumping the gun a little early.

This thread is to talk about the season, sharing pictures, discussing music/films, the different activities we do, gift ideas and everything else that goes along with it. I look forward to this thread every year and to see the names of members I’ve come to know over the years.

So, please let me be one of the first to wish you all a Merry Christmas and start the thread with a few pictures with more to come.





These are a few pictures to get the ball rolling. If you look closely, you can see our new pup Lemon sleeping in her crate. She will definitely add to the fun this Christmas season.

[mike24forever]

Annual OS Christmas Thread 2024



34 days until Christmas and Tim Horton’s has released their Christmas cup in my neck of the woods and I do not like it. I get what they are trying to do with it by using their Timbit’s in Christmas settings, however I prefer their more traditional cups.

[Ghost Of The Year]

Re: Annual OS Christmas Thread 2024

I've decided my new Christmas is when I hear ''pitchers and catchers report.''
Until then, I'll celebrate the old Christmas as a warm-up lol.

[pietasterp]

Re: Annual OS Christmas Thread 2024

I dunno...not Thanksgiving yet, but since T'giving is late this year, I'll allow it.

[Master Live 013]

Re: Annual OS Christmas Thread 2024

Here in PR we start on or about at November 1st and end at the 3rd weekend of January with las Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastian.

I feels it is about the right length, Halloween is so different from Christmas that anyone starting before it feels like a try-hard and "las Fiestas" have become so a huge deal that it feels like the correct ending point. The longest Christmas festivities in the world indeed

[mike24forever]

Re: Annual OS Christmas Thread 2024



33 days until Christmas. This is my tree in the basement. It has many decorations that I’ve painted myself or ones my wife has painted. I also have many decorations from my parents and sisters and there are many from my former students.

The Nativity set in the window is one of my favourite decorations that I own.

Now, on to you gentlemen. Thanks for returning for another year. I may have driven off a few guys over the years, so I appreciate you guys sticking around. I look forward to it every year and look forward to sharing the holidays on the board with you all. Hopefully we will have more OS members stop by and contribute.

Have a great day gentlemen!

[Majingir]

Re: Annual OS Christmas Thread 2024

Going to put up my tree this weekend. Already have lights up outside since it was warm enough to do it before.

Seems like this year people want to get ahead of things when planning Christmas events/menus and everything so that's a good sign.

Tv/movie wise, I'm probably sticking to the usuals again. Don't think there's really been any new Christmas movies the past few years (likely much longer) that have stood out as "must watch every year". Tried watching ones like Arthur Christmas and Klaus and those didn't really stick out to me at all.

[Ghost Of The Year]

Re: Annual OS Christmas Thread 2024

Tv/movie wise, I'm probably sticking to the usuals again. Don't think there's really been any new Christmas movies the past few years (likely much longer) that have stood out as "must watch every year". Tried watching ones like Arthur Christmas and Klaus and those didn't really stick out to me at all.

Nugget is dead? premiered a couple nights ago, I enjoyed it, think its on ... Paramount?

[mike24forever]

Re: Annual OS Christmas Thread 2024

32 days until Christmas.

The radio stations in my area, 98.1 fm (Toronto) and 99.7 fm finally flipped to Christmas music. 96.1 fm in Buffalo was the first terrestrial radio station to flip that I was aware of this year. That obviously does not include Sirius XM, which is always first. To me it is a great indicator that the Christmas Season is starting to arrive for everyone else.

The Toronto Santa Claus parade is next weekend. That use to be a huge part of my Christmas traditions. Now, I watch it on tv with the family. We attend the Peterborough Christmas parade going on 4 years in a row now, since we moved here. It's a smaller parade, but we all enjoy it for what it is.

I'm currently watching Colorado/Kansas game. I'm a Notre Dame fan, however I LOVE what coach Prime has done with that program. Hunter just scored his second TD. He's the best player in college. He's such a good kid. I love everything about this program and I absolutely hate the way people talk about the program. The hate for the Sanders and Hunter and everything associated with this program is ridiculous. Ohio State looked good today too. They are trouble!!

This is a big week of football for all my American friends. I hope you all enjoy your short work week and that you spend it with people you love, while watching football.

I use to take Thanksgiving Thursday off when I was teaching and I would watch football and eat Swish Chalet for dinner. I still do this, but now I have the wife and kids join me. I have not worked since 2012, and I miss it everyday, but I still try to replicate the holiday up here and embrace the kickoff of Christmas for many people.

I hope you all have an awesome rest of your weekend.

[Majingir]

Re: Annual OS Christmas Thread 2024

The Toronto Santa Claus parade is next weekend. That use to be a huge part of my Christmas traditions. Now, I watch it on tv with the family. We attend the Peterborough Christmas parade going on 4 years in a row now, since we moved here. It's a smaller parade, but we all enjoy it for what it is.

Parade is actually tomorrow (Sunday). They said they're streaming it live on YouTube for the first time ever. We'll see how that goes. I think CP24 tried this last year and it felt like it was literally just some reporters cell phone showing the parade from the sidewalk.

I hope the parade organizers have this camera set up on a post or building and you can actually watch the parade in its entirety.

I've hated the CTV coverage of the parade for years. It's almost unwatchable nowadays with most of the parade coverage just feeling like an episode of one of their morning talk shows (since the people hosting it are from one of their morning talk shows) combined with some random reporter asking camera shy kids questions on the streets, and the parade is mixed in somewhere in the broadcast too.

They have the local parade in my neighbourhood in a few weeks, haven't been to that one in forever, trying to see if I can pull off getting my nephew to see it since I don't think he's ever been to a parade before.

[mike24forever]

Re: Annual OS Christmas Thread 2024

Thanks my friend, my bad. Not living in Toronto I’m a little detached from what’s actually happening. I knew next weekend was involved l though. We use to rush home to watch it when we went down.

I completely agree about the parades coverage progressively getting worse the last 10 or so years. They use to show a lot of the parade, they didn't have musical guests and they didn't interview kids every 10 minutes or so. I will check out the live coverage on Youtube. That's a great idea, but like you I hope they have a 4K camera recording it.

[mike24forever]

Re: Annual OS Christmas Thread 2024



31 days until Christmas. This time next month the kids will be bouncing off the walls excited for Santa’s visit. It’s crazy that we are a month out.

These are a few decorations my mother painted for me. She painted 3 Santa’s for me and my 2 sisters back in the 80’s and when we moved out she gave them to us. The school house and the toy store basically sum me up pretty well. My mom and her friend use to paint decorations and sell them back in the day.

I mention these decorations and them being hand painted by my mom, because this afternoon the family is getting together at my sister’s to paint decorations. This is a tradition my grandmother started when I was 3. There is a decoration at my parent’s place that I painted when I was 3. So I love that the tradition is continuing with my two kids!!! I love the traditions of the holidays!

If you gentlemen are travelling this week, please travel carefully, leave early and get to your destination safely.

[Majingir]

Re: Annual OS Christmas Thread 2024

Thanks my friend, my bad. Not living in Toronto I’m a little detached from what’s actually happening. I knew next weekend was involved l though. We use to rush home to watch it when we went down.

I completely agree about the parades coverage progressively getting worse the last 10 or so years. They use to show a lot of the parade, they didn't have musical guests and they didn't interview kids every 10 minutes or so. I will check out the live coverage on Youtube. That's a great idea, but like you I hope they have a 4K camera recording it.

It wasn't so much the quality that was bad, it's the fact they're just filming from the sidewalk, so the live feed is at a non ideal angle, with people walking all around/in front the camera.

Having a fixed camera higher up would be much better.

Only thing I can think of for next weekend is maybe that's when they're airing it on tv? Although, I can't even find any info online about when it airs on tv this year. Unless that live stream is the broadcast this year and it's not actually airing on tv?

Looking at the timeline for the tv coverage, it definitely declined once Ken Shaw got taken off the coverage and then in 2016 they started turning the coverage into The Social 2.0.

[mike24forever]

Re: Annual OS Christmas Thread 2024

I got to watch it today while we were doing Christmas activities at my sisters! It was great seeing Blinky the police car apart the parade off! It was pretty good from what I saw. It will be interesting to see what they do with full commentary and performances!

Best float (spoiler alert)…Star Wars Lego

[Majingir]

Re: Annual OS Christmas Thread 2024

I got to watch it today while we were doing Christmas activities at my sisters! It was great seeing Blinky the police car apart the parade off! It was pretty good from what I saw. It will be interesting to see what they do with full commentary and performances!



Best float (spoiler alert)…Star Wars Lego

Apparently the YouTube version was the full one, unless I missed something?

I haven't seen it yet, just checked it for a few seconds to see what it's like. I did see them interviewing people a fair amount of time, hopefully they did focus on the actual parade and the audio ends up being good too.