Advent Calendar: Christmas Eve

By Circe -

I know it's cliche. So sue me. With all the chaos of the past couple of years, we need a little traditional bedrock to rest on.

Since I don't travel or see family for the holidays, I've had to develop my own rituals. Ratmas, for instance. I'm generally the only person in the house who celebrates Christmas, or at least Christmas decorations, so I try to keep the tinsel to my room. On the other hand, I am 100% in control of where my rats live, and they love food they can gnaw open, so I go all out in decking their space. They are rats and cannot stop me. They have fancy snowflake bowls and new fleeces and get wrapped treats and so on and so forth. Pictures tomorrow, so sit tight for that.

The other thing I usually do is work a show. There's a local production in Somerville called "The Slutcracker", which is a full-length feminist burlesque version of The Nutcracker. Not suitable for family, obvi, but if you're interested you can rent the video version at theslutcracker.com. I volunteer as house staff on XXX-Mas Eve. The Christmas audience is largely made up of weirdos and queer kids who can't go home, and elderly Jewish couples in their synagogue best. I show up in an Oscar-worthy red carpet dress, which I buy for about $10 at Goodwill.

For general audiences, I present here the New York City Ballet's version of the original Nutcracker. They're picky about embedding, so you may have to click through. The staging is largely if not entirely George Balanchine's; Balanchine was a brilliant choreographer and an execrable human being, and if you want to enjoy his work I recommend you never read anything more about him. The dancers, however, are superlative, and whatever I think of their choreographer, their work is lovely and deserves to be preserved for the ages. 

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If you want to see non-Advent Calendar posts during the holiday season, jump on over to my Patreon, and check out the different rewards. Subscribers get to see blog posts 24 hours early, videos of my dance work, extra essays about more personal subjects, and other things as they come to me.

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