From my fireplace to yours...

I had a tough time this year. It was among the busiest, most stressful that I can recall in a long time, and my mind the most fragile and least able to fend against the constant onslaught of frenetic inanity.

The fog lifted at about 4pm Christmas Day when a very good Christmas ham was in the oven, all the gifts were open and assembled, and I was drinking a cup of tea and realizing, now, a quieter, more peaceful season was descending.

Some TV channels broadcast a Yule Log over night on Christmas Eve. A couple years ago, WGN did the Yule Log with Old Time Radio, which I have somewhere on DVD but have squirreled away where I can't find it right now. But WXMI Cable 295 did it this year accompanied by music, which turned out to be a softer, tranquil collection uncluttered with ads or rock'n'roll or hip-hop or cutesy kids yearning for front teeth or hippopotami.

I recorded it, if you'd like to have it:

Two hours from Christmas Eve WXMI-DT Cable 295 (Antenna TV)[1]
Yule_Log_WXMI_Antenna_TV_2011-12-25_0030.zip
Yule_Log_WXMI_Antenna_TV_2011-12-25_0040.zip
http://www.mediafire.com/?lloll5l49oc52➚

You know what else Antenna TV did? Something that TV Land used to do back in the old days when they were truly retro and did "Merrythons": They played hours of classic Christmas sitcom TV - Hazel, Dennis the Menace, George Burns and Gracie Allen - and they cut in delightful little flashes from previous and upcoming holiday programming (you'll see a block at the end of the 2nd Yule Log). The only thing I would have asked more of was holiday movies, perhaps a block of old royalty-free versions of A Christmas Carol.

My Christmas is stretching out over week this year, as I have company coming, and I am enjoying keeping the spirit a little longer, and a few presents still under the tree, now that for most everyone else it's reduced to so much crumpled paper and bows and day-after shopping.

[1]
.ts files will play with any good media player. See my page on combining and playing.