تفسیر درس

Christmas – Commentary Lesson

Hi, this is Kristin, welcome back to the commentary for the conversation Christmas.

It’s funny, just the other day I was talking to Joe about a few things that I never received for Christmas. There were actually three things and I remember these from when I was a little girl. I wanted them, I don’t know for how many years.

Y’know, I’d make a Christmas list. I’d write down everything I wanted in the hopes that I’d been a good girl that year and Santa Claus would bring me these things.

So there were three things that I did not… I never received and I don’t remember how many Christmases I actually put them on my Christmas list. But one of them was something called the Snoopy Snow-Cone Machine. So Snoopy is actually a dog and he’s a character in the cartoons called Charlie Brown. We actually mentioned Charlie Brown Christmas in the conversation.

So Snoopy’s a dog and the Snoopy Snow-Cone Machine was his doghouse. So it’s made out of plastic. And you… it was made in a way that you put ice in it, like a cube of ice I think, and you would turn something to cut up the ice so it would be what we call shaved ice.

And you put it… it came with these little cups; you could put then the ice in the cups and it came with this red syrup. A syrup is something sweet, so you could put that on the ice and then eat it.

But I don’t know. There was something about the Snoopy Snow-Cone Machine that I really wanted this. I wouldn’t call it a toy but I really wanted it and I never got it.

Something else was a game called Mousetrap. So Mousetrap was a board game. Back then, well, no, we had video games when I was little, but board games were still very popular to play. In fact, my family had a big blue chest that you could open and there was just all of these different games that we stored in it.

So Mousetrap was a game that for some reason I never got. I really wanted that game.

And then there was a doll that I wanted. It was the Bubble Yum doll. So Bubble Yum is the name of a company that makes a bubble gum. So Bubble Yum is the name of the company, makes bubble gum. So they came out one year back in the 1970s at some point, I guess. They came out with this doll that, first of all she had on jeans, blue jeans and a little red t-shirt and it said Bubble Yum.

And she had… her mouth was open. She had short blond hair, straight blond hair, and then she had this little open mouth. So you would… it came with like six balloons. You would put one of the balloons in her mouth and then you would take her arm and push her arm up and down and it would blow up the balloon from her mouth like she was blowing a bubble with bubble gum. So I really wanted the Bubble Yum doll, but I never got her.

So anyway, it was kind of fun sharing those memories with Joe the other day and I actually was able to pull up the commercials for all three of those items, even though those were made back in the 1970s or early 1980s. I could find the commercials on the internet, which was fun. We watched those commercials.

Okay, so I thought I would talk today for the commentary about a fun, good memory that I have of Christmas.

As mentioned in the conversation, Joe and I are not here in San Francisco for a lot of Christmases. We actually go and travel at that time. Travel to other countries and many times, like if we’re in Thailand, for example, Christmas isn’t really celebrated. So a lot of times it doesn’t even feel like Christmas to us, especially if we’re in a hot country.

So two years ago we actually did not go travel. We stayed here. And we decided, since we were staying here, so this would have been two Christmases ago, yep. We decided that we were going to home, go to where we grew up to be with our parents and our brothers and sisters to spend Christmas with them. Because we never do this. We’re never here in the country.

But we decided we wanted to surprise our parents. So we talked a little bit about this in the conversation. I thought I’d go into a little more detail.

So what we decided to do was to tell… Joe has three brothers and I have two brothers. So we decided to tell our brothers so that they could kind of help us with the planning, the plans.

So what we did is we flew into Pennsylvania, that’s the state where Joe grew up. It’s in the northeastern part of the United States. We flew into Pennsylvania a few days before Christmas and we first went to his, or once we got settled at his brother’s house, and we drove over to the house where he grew up, where his parents still live, Joe’s parents. And we went up to the front door and his mother came to the door, she was so shocked.

She was so surprised to see us standing there, her comment was, “What the hell?” She couldn’t think of anything else to say. So that was really funny. We laughed. We told her, “Oh, surprise. We’ve come to surprise you for Christmas.”

Well, his dad wasn’t there. His dad was out doing something, I don’t know. He was away from the house. So we had his mom call his dad to figure out when he was coming home. He was going to be home in about 15 minutes.

So we decided to hide from him. How did we do this? Oh, okay. So his dad got there, pulled his car into the garage, and then came into the house through the front door.

While he was going from the garage to the front door, Joe and I went from inside the house into the garage where we were going to stay hidden from him. We were hiding from him. So his dad comes… goes into the house and Joe calls him. Joe calls him from his cell phone so he thinks we’re here in California.

He answers the phone and Joe starts talking to him and Joe asked him a question, I can’t remember what it was, but it had something to do with… I don’t know. He asked him a question and his dad didn’t know the answer and Joe said… well, whatever the question was it had something to do with showing Joe something, showing him how to do something, maybe it was about a recipe for cooking or something.

So, he’s like “Well, Dad, why don’t you just show me?” And his dad said, “What do you mean? You’re… how can I show you? You’re not here.” And Joe said, “Well, why don’t you come out into the garage.”

And his dad was really confused. So he’s walking with the phone through the house and he opens the garage door and comes out and we yell, “Surprise!” So his dad was really, really surprised also.

So that was a fun Christmas with his family. And then we were there Christmas Eve, so the night before Christmas. And it was really nice because all of his brothers were there, his sister-in-laws, their two children, so his two nieces.

And it actually, as we’re all sitting there together for dinner Christmas Eve, it actually started snowing which is really special if that happens right around Christmastime, on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

So then Christmas morning we got up and flew to Georgia from Pennsylvania. So Georgia, the state where I grew up in the southeastern part of the United States.

And we flew into Georgia and then we had to drive. We rented a car and we had to drive, it’s about an hour to where my parents live. So all, with this being Christmas day, I had one uncle and my two brothers, they were all there at my parents’ house and they knew we were on our way.

So we got there to my parents’ house and my brothers were trying to distract my parents as we were driving up the driveway. They have a really steep driveway. So we were driving up it and my brothers were trying to get their attention so they wouldn’t hear the car coming up.

So they didn’t hear the car. So we get out and we go to the front door and I opened the door. I didn’t ring the doorbell, I just opened it and we came in and I said, “Merry Christmas!”

And we’re going up these stairs and my dad was in the kitchen, coming out of the kitchen right as the stairs… we’re going up these stairs and the kitchen’s right here so my dad comes out of the kitchen, sees Joe and I, and says, this big grin is on his face, and he says, “Well, Kristie?” He calls me Kristie, my parents both do. It’s my nickname.

“Kristie, what are you doing here?” He was so surprised.

And luckily my mother was sitting in the living room where she could see my dad coming out of the kitchen but she still couldn’t see us because we’re still coming up the stairs and there’s a wall blocking the stairs from where she’s sitting in the living room.

So she luckily didn’t hear my dad so she didn’t know. So we keep… I went like this to my dad, like don’t say anything more. And we came up, because I realized my mom didn’t know we were there, so we come up to the top of the stairs where we could see her in the living room. And I think we said it again, “Merry Christmas!” And she started crying.

She was so happy to see me because, well, in fact, she actually told me that she had a friend who was asking just a couple of days before if I would be coming for Christmas. And she said, “Oh no, Kristin never comes here at Christmas.” And so it was a huge surprise for her. It makes me… it brings tears to my eyes because she was so happy.

So that was a really good Christmas. And it was so fun to see all of our parents’ different reactions. They were very different. I think my favorite was my mom’s though.

So that’s my story about a really good memory from a Christmas not so long ago, just two years ago. This Christmas Joe and I will actually be here again. We’ve just decided not to travel again this year so I’m actually looking forward to being here.

We’re going to stay in San Francisco. We’re not going to go to Georgia or Pennsylvania. I think it will be a nice change from being abroad. Usually we go to Southeast Asia so it will be a nice change from being in hot, humid countries for Christmas.

If you celebrate Christmas and you have any good memories, share with us on the Ning site what those might be. And if you don’t celebrate Christmas, tell us about a holiday that you do celebrate and that you have a really good memory from.

Alright, that’s all for this lesson and if you do celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas to you and Happy New Year. See you next month. Bye.