Old Enough to Buy My Own Candy
- Why did they not have caramel apples coated in M&Ms and/or cookie crumbs and/or coconut when I was a kid? Is this a new innovation in candy, or a cultural problem with the Midwest, or what?
- No one at Francis’s is answering the question that obviously follows up a question like this:
Have I also mentioned that, cussing aside, I’ve always been sentimental about yuletide, even when I was really too young to actually be sentimental about anything?
So I’ll bring it up here. Just how old is old enough to actually be sentimental?
- The Posada was lovely; the incongruities of candlelight on busy stretches of Colorado Blvd. were more than balanced out by the gut-wrenching combination of Architecture! Music! Death! at the entrance to several churches. Thanks to all who donated; the organizers weren’t completely on the internet ball and didn’t send any notices of internet donations until Thursday evening-ish, but I know of at least $50 – way more than I was expecting! Anyone who gave and would like a cute thank-you postcard, send me your address.
- I bought myself an album of Christmas music the other day. It claims to be chock full of authentic-esque Medieval and Renaissance yuletide hymns, and the cover features a guy in a doublet and sunglasses. Early music with the fashion sensibilities of a cheesy 80s movie! What’s not to like about that, particularly when it’s in the $1.99 bin?
It doesn’t quite live up to either the pre-Baroque or the 2020s, but at least the generic arrangements are of Gloucestershire Wassail rather than Here We Come A-Wassailing.
- Happy Hanukkah, to those of you who don’t remember; also to those of us who only remembered because it’s on our office calendar, along with the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party and Eddie Vedder’s birthday.
francis s. wrote:
I’m ashamed that I didn’t answer.
I don’t think one can put an exact date on when it is possible to be sentimental about something. Except that five is probably too young: You are too busy experiencing things for the first time still to feel nostalgia for the past.
What do you think?
Posted 08 Dec 2020 at 10:51 am ¶
yami wrote:
Oh, don’t be ashamed, Francis! It was an old post by the time I got there.
I’m not sure nostalgia is a prerequisite for sentimentality, though it surely helps. I’m thinking of the kind of sentimentality required by the latest round of Hallmark commercials (person sees a piece of kitsch, gets all teary-eyed thinking about how someone will react to an unexpected gift, and walks out of the store with like a billion bags of godawful crap and a goofy grin) – a kind of disproportionate emotional investment in objects and ritual. Which seems like the sort of thing one divests oneself of as a teenager, only so it can eventually creep back into your adult life.
Posted 08 Dec 2020 at 11:23 am ¶