Today I was in a serious Christmas funk. With Christmas only 3 days away, I was just not feeling festive. Not even a little bit.
So I, therefore, forced Thing 1 and Thing 2 to watch “The Nutcracker” with me in an attempt to recapture a bit of holiday cheer. (This is a holiday tradition at our house—at least, it’s something I enforce every year, whether anyone likes it or not. And isn’t that what holiday family traditions are about anyway???) We had started watching it a week or so ago, so we didn’t have to do the whole thing in one sitting (think boys sighing in relief here). And the boys, bless their hearts, actually managed to seem interested almost until the very end. Thing 1 only sniggered slightly at irregular intervals. And both Thing 1 and Thing 2 wanted to know what happened to the Mouse King, because really, for boys, it’s all downhill after the battle scene anyway.
And the end of the movie is where the great idea struck me. What better way to get that holiday feeling on than to make a new holiday tradition? Another thing that no one particularly wants to do that I make us do every year so we can be relieved when the holidays are over! Hah! Perfect!
And thus, from such humble beginnings, the family Nutcracker production was born. This Frankenstein baby from my imagination (I mean, I can use Frankenstein here even though he would technically seem to belong to Halloween instead of Christmas?) would include me and my two boys dancing our Christmassy hearts out to the Nutcracker suite in some way vaguely and, hopefully, completely humorously resembling the real thing. (Mr. Knightley would, of course, always be exempt from this fiasco lest he die of complete mortification and deprive us of his most pleasing company.) And so, thanks to the instant gratification of Spotify, I turned on the Nutcracker suite, moved a couch aside, and we were off.
At first, we sort of warmed up to the overture, but by the March of the Wooden Soldiers, we were getting some seriously military moves on. Soon after this, Thing 2 tried to barricade himself behind the couch so as not to have to participate anymore, but Thing 1 and I, for his greater good, pulled him out. I must admit that we tried our best during the various ethnic dances (you know, Spanish, Russian, Arabian, and Chinese), but the true highlight of that section of the production was when Thing 1 managed to pull off some real Russian-esque squatty-kicky dancing. I was highly impressed by this. But the truest moments of brilliance came with the Pas de Deux with flying boys and the Dance of the Karate Chop fairy.
We soon began to have artistic differences after the Dance of the Karate Chop Fairy, however, since Thing 2, fearing that I, the Karate Chop Fairy, would actually karate chop someone, began to attack me with a real nutcracker that he had hidden with himself behind the couch. Apparently, this was for protection . (At this point, I knew that he was really paying attention during the movie.) The nutcracker attack was soon followed by the barrage of the Lego Star Wars mini spaceships from the Lego Star Wars advent calendar (because nothing says excitement leading up to Christmas quite like Lego Star Wars stuff that gets disassembled to make other stuff constantly, thereby leaving little Lego landmines of pain scattered across the house for my feet to enjoy. But alas, I digress .) At that point, we had completely left the real Nutcracker story behind, and I felt like it was time to end the production with a hearty, “Ho, ho, go to time out, Thing 2!”
So, although we did not quite make it through the whole Nutcracker suite, I felt satisfied that this was a good start to a brand new, pointless yet amusing holiday tradition. Perhaps next year we shall try some costuming. And yes, Virginia, I do feel a bit more Christmassy now. Thanks for asking.
