Lights, please? It's time to get psyched for the holidays!

Tomorrow I embark on a road trip from Boston to Ohio with Boy and dog in tow. I've got my laptop with AC adaptor charger, my notebook with many pens, and 9 library books to make the trip totally awesome. I never dread a long drive. We'll make it as far as we can tomorrow, stop for the night, then drive the rest of the way Thursday morning.

I'm not a big Thanksgiving fan. I love food and eating, but I have a relatively small appetite, so the dinner portion of the experience goes pretty fast for me. And believe it or not, I don't really like leftovers (I know... if you ever see me take leftovers home from a restaurant, it's because I'm too polite to have the waiter throw away my food. Instead I take it home in a box, leave it in my fridge for a day, THEN throw it away ... I suck).

For me, Thanksgiving has always been a day where the entire family hangs out in the family room, the parade followed by football is on tv, we eat, we snooze, we might eat again, we might play a board game, but mostly we just hang out. And that's awesome, but for me, Thanksgiving is just really the starter's pistol that sets me off and running towards the best holiday of all...

I love Christmas! December is so full of excitement for me, kicking off with my birthday on December 2. I set the tradition long ago that my birthday is the day I deck my house out for the holidays.

First, there's Christmas music, which I'll start listening to on the way home from Thanksgiving, whether the Boy and the dog like it or not! Confession: I love love LOVE Christina Aguilera's version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas! (warning, she gets a little off in this live version ... the album version gives me serious chills, though)

And of course, Mariah goes on heavy rotation:

I also love Christmas oldies, including "What Christmas Means to Me" and "Someday at Christmas" by Stevie Wonder. I'd share my Christmas playlist with you, but there's 167 songs on it... yes, I have a problem. No, I don't care to solve it.

But it doesn't just stop at Christmas music ... there's the Christmas movies, too!

I have an unending debate with my friend Patrick over whether or not Love Actually is a Christmas movie. I say absolutely yes (and so does Wikipedia!). He vehemently disagrees. Where do you guys fall on that one?

I also love watching Christmas Vacation ... enjoy this scene! (Not at work though ... NSFW due to language.)

I actually saw Elf in the theater, totally against my wishes, thinking it was just another stupid Will Ferrell kiddie movie. Oh how wrong I was. I love Elf! How could you not?

But the best of all....

A Charlie Brown Christmas. I love Linus, and during this scene my heart feels like it's going to burst from its chest and I get a lil tear in my eye. It's not Christmas until I've watched this very scene about ten bajillion times.

I'm also a big fan of All I Want for Christmas (an often-forgotten early 90s piece of awesome cinema), A Christmas Story, The Family Stone, The Holiday, It's A Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, Scrooged, The Muppet Christmas Carol (well, really ANY version of A Christmas Carol, except for the one with Jim Carrey ... no thank you), Rudolph and the stop-motion/claymation classics, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (ok, so not totally in the Christmas spirit, but I love it anyway).

Holy crap, just putting all this together is getting me so psyched up for the Christmas season.

BTW, one way I definitely WON'T be getting in the Christmas spirit? Black Friday. I've never participated, and I don't intend to. Ever. I will be trying to do the whole shop local thing for the holidays this year. I'll definitely be checking out my favorite local book shops to try and fill all my gift-giving needs!

So, what about you? Christmas music? Christmas movies? Baking Christmas cookies? How do you get in the holiday spirit?