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The 12 Blogs of Christmas: Six. So What Are You Doing This Christmas?
Yesterday we headed north, to see something exciting being filmed. It turned out to be excellent. And that's about all I can say, for now, sorry. Another reason 2010 might turn out to be a very good one. And congratulations and thanks again to any of the cast and crew that are reading this.
First up, two rather cool bits of business. The esteemed Digital Spy are counting down David Tennant's Top Ten Doctor Who moments, as voted for by their audience, and interviewed a bunch of us about those moments, myself included. In this one, I'm just coming out of a rant about how good Moffat's storytelling is, and caught here I look like I might be about to launch myself at the throat of the interviewer. These will keep going every day, so remember to pop back. The first one can be found here.
And the Forbidden Planet blog have asked me to pick my favourite things of the year. Unsurprisingly, my choices are largely the same as they were on this blog, but I do say some different things about them. That can be found here.
Laurie Pink, meanwhile, is looking backwards and forwards at the same time...
So, to the business of the day. I asked a bunch of folk, from the three media worlds I move in, what they'll be doing for this Christmas. And got some interesting replies. Let's start with the world of Doctor Who...
 Noel Clarke: 'This year, having just finished my third written movie, second directing, me and my wife will hold a big Xmas dinner with our friends and family, including my buddy Geoff and his fiance. It's the first time we've held it and are looking forward to it a lot. A lot has changed for me, but as you made me think about it, a lot is still the same.' |
 India Fisher: 'This year I'm having a big family Christmas. My Mum retired to France last year and this is our first Christmas at her new house. We're all very excited by the thought of eating our own body weight in cheese. I've got two neices and three nephews ranging from seven to two, so I'm expecting the decibel level to be fairly high. Am really looking forward to it though. For me Christmas is all about big family get together. And am hoping it might snow! X' |
 Chris Chibnall: 'Christmas belongs to our kids now: my youngest will be three and a half, and it's the first Christmas he's fully aware of. Every Christmas tree, every light, every snowman that's been appearing over the last week or two has been welcomed with a gasp of wonder and an insistent pointing finger. For him, everything is new. So our plan for this Christmas is to provide plenty of delight and live vicariously through our children's joy. Happy Christmas!' |
 James Moran: 'This year, I'll be forcing myself to take a proper break from writing. I'll probably cope for about three days, at which point the twitching and foaming at the mouth will become uncontrollable and I'll start writing notes with gravy on bits of turkey.' |
 Toby Hadoke: 'I'm the cook of the house - well, we can both cook, I just like the attention everyone gives you so insist on doing it all myself. Having spent my childhood doing the washing up I know which I prefer. So I'll kick off with smoked salmon and scrambled eggs on muffins or potato cakes for breakfast. Then I'll be in the kitchen all morning preparing the lunch while the kids open all their presents and troop in to show me a baffling array of computer games and toys my increasingly befuddled brain won't be able to comprehend and will probably slightly disapprove of. Then lunch and praise, and mock modesty as I say "Oh it was nothing" as people tuck into the feast. Only afterwards will I open my presents (I'm terribly middle class so will always go the route of deferred gratification) before collapsing on the sofa and allowing everyone to wait on me all afternoon "Oh, don't let Toby get up, he cooked lunch". Then Doctor Who (fortunately everyone in our house understands the No-One Talks When Doctor Who Is On rule, even visiting relatives and passing neighbours) before the best meal of the day - leftovers for supper, augmented with cheeses, pickles and other deli delights. Alas I'm at an age where my natural indolence requires me to diet for a month beforehand so as not to let such a gargantuan ripaste knacker my addled body, but it is worth it (though I'm slavering as I write this). I will also have The Great Escape on and playing in the DVD player just in case they don't show it. I won't necessarily watch it, just turn on the TV at random moments to catch bits of it, which is how I seem to recall watching it in my youth over the course of a number of festive seasons.' |
Thanks, you lot. There'll be quite a few more Who bods along (including, erm, the bosses, eek) when we look at New Year at the end of the 12 Blogs. Now, what about those from the world of science fiction?
 Lois McMaster Bujold: 'I am something of a holiday dropout these days, with only one family member, my grown son, still in town. I have, for example, learned to cook an essentialist-minimalist Thanksgiving dinner, consisting only of the things one would have seconds of anyway: dressing, gravy, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, an 11-pound turkey, and the two of us. Someone once defined “eternity” as “two people and a ham”. The current batch of turkey-wild rice soup, frozen in plastic pint containers left over from the Indian carry-out place, may well last till spring. So my Christmas tree is sadly rudimentary -- it’s the top half of my old artificial tree, stuck on the base, which just fits in my front bay window and so doubles as outdoor lighting as well. Because, you know, it’s Minnesota, the wind chill was minus-30 F. this week, and I’m not going up on a ladder outdoors to either string up or take down lights. I totally enjoy my neighbors’ efforts in that regard, though. Love the lights, the more the better. Best winter holiday display ever, seen in west Minneapolis a few years back: the whole house front done up as the witch’s castle from The Wizard of Oz, with “SURRENDER DOROTHY!” written across the roof in blue lights. I about drove off the road, laughing.' |
 Ellen Kushner: 'For many of my friends, especially those estranged from their families (alienated writers & artists? really?), Christmas hits like the Atom Bomb of Pain. Having grown up not celebrating the holiday, I have no emotional baggage around it (barring some residual "You get a Big Tree in your Livingroom?!" envy). And so, for many years, I have provided a service I call The Happy Jew Christmas. I come over to your house on Christmas Eve, full of good cheer and no subtext whatsoever. We hang out. I will tell you my jokes, or laugh hard at yours, and you can regale me with harrowing stories about your dysfunctional family, or the plots of all your favorite old movies. We can cook an elaborate meal, or pop a huge bowl of popcorn. We can listen to slurpy Christmas carols, or old Tom Lehrer albums. If we read The Lady's Not for Burning aloud, I will even let you play Jennet Jourdemayne. It's your holiday, after all. (I confess that a character in my recent story 'Dulce Domum'[in Jonathan Strahan's Eclipse 3 from Night Shade Books] fills much the same role for my angst-ridden, Kenneth Grahame-loving protagonist. Art imitates life....again!)' |
 Charles Stross: 'Dead simple: I always make a point of working on Christmas Day. This is not purely out of sheer perversity; it's to remind myself that neither I, nor any of my ancestors, were Christian. (I may not be much of a Jew -- indeed, I'm a practicing atheist of the First Church of Richard Dawkins -- but the injunction against borrowing alien religious customs has stuck with me.)' |
 Kim Newman: 'I'll be meeting up with my oldest friends - Eugene Byrne, Alex Dunn, Brian Smedley, who I either met in the trenches in World War One or was at school with in the 1970s - in a Bristol restaurant on the 23rd for our Annual General Meeting, when we open up the envelope with the predictions we made last year (and see who scored in the Dead Pool - some of us have been nominating Margaret Thatcher for so many years that it'll almost be a disappointment when and if she goes) and make some new (probably gloomy) ones for 2010. Then, I'll go to Aller, in Somerset, and spend Christmas with my Dad, my sister and my nephew - the traditional holiday: presents, champagne, big meal, disappointing Doctor Who special. And be back in London for New Year, by which time I'll be partied out. I'm actually hoping to get some serious headway on a book during the down-time after the holiday when everyone else is away from their desks and not commissioning freelance assignments from me. So, a Merry Christmas to All Our Readers and another lump of coal on the fire please, Mr Scrooge ...' |
 Sean Williams: 'This year Amanda and I have managed to shunt our families to the Eve and Boxing Day, so (after a small amount of work in the morning, as always) we'll have a picnic with the kids and then go for a swim at the beach. Then we'll have some friends over for laid-back drinks in the evening. If we can pull that off, it might be the best Christmas ever.' |
 Shanna Swendson: 'This is turning into a musical Christmas season for me. I sing in the church choir, so we had the big community concert the first weekend in December, the second weekend in December we're doing The Messiah, and then the Sunday morning before Christmas I'll be the soprano soloist for the music we're doing. I would say that I'd be grateful for the break and not sing for a while after that, but I suspect I'll be walking around the house humming bits from The Messiah to myself for months. I imagine I'll be spending this Christmas Day the same way I spend every one (and the way I spent Christmas ten years ago), visiting my parents, who live in a semi-rural area outside a very small town in northeast Texas. It's a peaceful way to spend the key part of such a hectic season. We mostly hang around the house and read, or I sit at the kitchen table and watch the birds at my dad's ever-growing collection of bird feeders and the horses in the pasture behind my parents' back yard.' |
 Lou Anders: 'This Christmas I will be watching my almost-five year old with a mixture of deep love and deep envy. He doesn't know it, but he's getting a full set action figures of the new Star Trek cast (along with the Enterprise bridge), as well as a full set of the original series cast that I've had in the plastic for over a decade. He's also getting a Tumbler-style Batmobile - the one that opens up and ejects a Batpod. He already has the previous version of the Tumbler, for the non-Motorcycle Batman figure to ride in. I gave him my own first Batmobile, a big plastic version of the 1960s TV Batmobile that I had when I was his age, and while I dearly love it (it will always be "my" Batmobile), the deep envy comes in at seeing just how much cooler toys are today. His Tumbler is so much more detailed, more functional, and, well-cooler, than my poor old toy. And don't get me started on the costumes! Anyway, I'm sure he'll be getting lots of other things from lots of relatives, but it's my job to pass on the appreciation of the Caped Crusader and Captain Kirk (or rather Spock - a good biracial role-model), and I feel I'm doing it admirably. They'll also be lots of toys for my daughter, but she is still of the age where she will be equally excited by the wrapping paper, and I suspect a good deal of my Christmas will be spent attempting to keep her from eating it. However, as simply smiling at her as she attempts to tear my nose from my face, gouge my eyes, or break my glasses apart calms and comforts me like nothing else, this is a wonderful thing. Finally, if I can get everyone to sit still for it, watching A Muppet Family Christmas is something of a tradition in the Anders' house. But really, after all the traveling I've had to do lately and the mounting stress of my job, a day spent rolling around on the floor with two kids seems like more than Christmas. It seems like Heaven.' |
 Lee Harris: 'This year we'll be staying in, as we have for the last five or six years. Having young children does that. We've lost the freedom to go out when we want, to watch Christmas TV as it's broadcast, and to partake of too much wine, but you know... what we've gained in return is worth so much more. So yes, we'll be staying home - and we couldn't be happier about it.' |
 Niall Harrison: 'According to Google maps, I'm going to be travelling over 1200 miles in the next two weeks, from Oxford to Castle Cary to Oldham to St Andrews and back to Oxford, visiting parents and friends. But I'm looking forward to all of it. Plus, the train journeys will be helpful for catching up on all those 2009 novels I haven't managed to get to yet ...' |
 Graham Sleight: 'I haven't been a believer for quite a while, but the holidays still mean good stuff. For me, those include: a) Family - I'll be staying with my brother and his wife, and enjoying their awesome cooking, which follows the rule that adding bacon always improves things; b) Media consumption - I'm just finishing a re-watch of Twin Peaks, whose weirdness I never get tired of, and I believe there's also some Doctor Who on its way?; and c) Exploring - using the spare time to wander round all the sights of London I don't get to see in the normal run of things.' |
Thanks, everyone. And, finally, what of those from the world of comics?
 David Lloyd: 'This year I'll be in Florida over the period, escaping the dark, short, and soon-to-be-cold days for a while, gazing at the oean under a warm sun. Unless a hurricane comes along and spoils it all, that is...' |
 Bryan Hitch: 'This Christmas is busy. I'm going to be taking a month or two off from the start of Feb as our fifth child is due on the second so am going to be working my pert arse off making sure all my stuff is done by the end of Jan. I shall of course be fighting my kids for the controllers of all their cool radio control vehicles all day before we all settle down for Doctor Who and complain we have to wait a week for part two....' |
 Marv Wolfman: 'For Christmas I'm doing pretty much what I've been doing for the past 18 years and more - we celebrate with Noel's Parents and brother. This year it's at our house, other times it's at theirs in Texas. We scramble to get the ham made, the turkey and all the trimmings, then Christmas morning we hand out the gifts and veg as best we can.' |
 Matt (D'Israeli) Brooker: 'I'm in Greece right now, so for Christmas we'll be taking a train up north through the mountains to the small town of Xanthi, where we'll be having a Greek family Christmas with some old friends of my belovèd's.' |
 Ben Templesmith: 'I'll actually be traveling up to San Francisco on Christmas Day, to have dinner and general good times with an old buddy whom I met when the guy kept insisting on buying my art. So lots of sitting around talking comic art, with a dinner party with my extended San Franciscan family it looks like. Not to mention a trip out to Napa Valley wine country the following day or so. Christmas stopped being about presents and the general trim awhile ago. Now for me it's all about sharing good times with good people. I'll take actual memories over consumerism any day.' |
 Leah Moore & John Reppion: 'This Christmas is going to be a pretty special one as our son Edward was born just a little over a month ago on the 30th of October. We'll be spending Ed's first Yule here in Liverpool with our friends and family. We're already acutely aware that this is probably the cheapest Christmas we'll have for many years to come as Ed is, as yet, unable to ask for an X-Box, mobile phone contract, drum kit, car, etc. It will also be an uncharacteristically sober festive season for us, although multiple feeds and nappy changes through the night and early morning should still see us falling asleep in front of the telly as per the tradition.' |
 Emma Vieceli: 'Well, this year we're taking the plunge. A rite of passage for all grown-up homeowners; my parents are coming to us for Christmas day! There will be mulled wine, there will be port, there will be food, there will be board games - I can't wait! I'm a bit of an old-fashioned soul where the festive season is concerned normally, but I'm not sure that this fact will stop us pulling out Beatles Rock Band at some point. Then, on boxing day some close friends have invited us over to invade their home with yet more boardgames, huzzah! The female half of the said friends is, incidentally, the one responsible for me ever becoming a comic artist in the first place, so it's only right I now trash her house in return ^_~' |
 Conor Kilpatrick: 'As an international podcasting and comic book media superstar I had many enticing options this year for Christmas, but I decided to keep things simple (I had to call George Clooney to break the news that I would not be stopping by the Italian villa this year. He was crushed.). Instead I will be hanging with my family in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City where we will pray for snow and try not to drive each other the kind of crazy that involves a visit by the authorities.' |
 Josh Flanagan: 'This Christmas will be special, because it will be the last one in which I am not a father. I plan to take my wife up to Maine to spend the holiday with my family, and they will spend much time with their hands on my wife's belly, and trying to get us to tell them the name we've picked out for him. Of course, next year it's a whole new ball game. I will also likely eat too many holiday themed cookies and candies. You can't beat the Reese's Peanut Butter Christmas Tree. Well, you can but the Easter and Halloween themed Reese's are more or less the same thing.' |
Thank you, everyone! Tomorrow, come and join us for More Comics For Hugo Voters and more surprises. Until then, Cheerio!
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Thanks for the blog..always interesting to read what the literati do for the holidays. Most of the years, my family who are on both coasts get together and I get a chance to play with my niece. Three things we always plan:a Christmas morning hike, open Christmas crackers, and rent a movie. As my parents get older, I'm finding that my sister and I are starting our own traditions...
With all the DW goodies lately, Christmas seems to have come early.
Wow, we have the same Christmas breakfast as Toby Hadoke.
With ref to the Digital Spy clip - aren't there any females allowed to comment on DW in public? All the women I know loathed that ending to FOTD with a passion, for the reason many of them loathed JE - because it's another stonking great example of The Doctor Knows Best. At least a few people had the grace to express a few reservations...
This isn't an anti-Moff rant - I'd probably pick "Yeah, and I'm the Lord of Time" from GITF for my No 1 Ten moment - but I really don't like the thought of the Doctor as we see him in the last frames of FOTD.
Heather: good to hear what readers are doing too. Adad: there's a proud boast. Mef: why would anyone express reservations in a Best Of celebration?