Mary Novaria

For many of us, no holiday season is complete without viewing beloved Christmas movies. Some are old classics we grew up with, while others have become favorites more recently. Remember waiting for Rudolph the Rednosed-Reindeer to come on the family television? In a pre-VHS, pre-DVR, pre-streaming world, we only had one chance to see it. It was appointment TV, and the annual airing was a pivotal event, one that ushered in weeks of tree trimming, cookie baking, carol singing, and the anticipation of Christmas morning.  Our current rotation is an eclectic mix of the sentimental, musical, and farcical, generally culminating in our yearly viewing of the Capra classic It’s a Wonderful Life. Despite knowing the plot and outcome and having memorized much of the dialogue, I look forward to the film each season. The opening titles and music awaken something both novel and familiar, nostalgia, but through the lens of one more year of life experiences, somehow bittersweet, like unwrapping t...

Some of my friends can’t wait for the holidays. The rest can’t wait for them to be over. It’s no wonder we’re conflicted. We’ve allowed our most traditional, warm and fuzzy holiday to be smothered by an avalanche of consumerism and immediate gratification. Goodbye “over the river and through the woods.” This year, it’s over to Target to get the goods. Meanwhile, Squanto and Norman Rockwell are spinning in their graves and Thanksgiving is forced to stand as a bookend for a season of competitive retailing and manufactured desire. There’s plenty of cluck-clucking and tsk-tsking over stores that dare to be open Thanksgiving, but we have only ourselves to blame. And by “we” I mean this collective society in which we live... the same way that “we” are to blame for Congress: We put up with the insanity. Walmart and Macy’s know they can count on us to worship at their altars, that we will happily whip out our credit cards and partake in their communion of gr...

As seen in Feminine Collective simpleinsomnia  Flickr via  Compfight   cc I was 8 years old when I realized there was no Santa Claus. I’d lost the Snow White watch I’d received for Christmas—the one with the yellow leather band that came with a plastic figurine of my favorite Disney character. Sitting at breakfast some months later, I confessed the watch was missing. “We paid good money for that watch,” my father said. His face wore “the look”—the one that made it clear he was disgusted with my carelessness. “I thought Santa gave me the watch.” I was confused and my mother jumped in with a feeble attempt to preserve the myth. “Well, who do you think sends Santa the money?”  Read More...

Featured at  My mother's boots were on the wrong feet. The family was gathering at our house on Christmas Eve and my mom had yet to arrive. In the past year she'd begun showing up uncharacteristically late for things: Mother's Day brunch, dental appointments and, most recently, picking up her grandson from school. It was snowing hard and she didn't answer her cell phone. I pictured her Mazda in a ditch -- much the same as I did when my teenager wasn't home by curfew. My mother finally stumbled through the front door, stomping fresh snow from her feet, and I gave her a big hug of relief. But when she plopped down on the steps in the hall to pull off her puffy, black winter boots, my sister-in-law and I locked eyes in shared disbelief. Click here to read more !

This piece first appeared in the Huffington Post on December 22, 2014 My mother's boots were on the wrong feet. The family was gathering at our house on Christmas Eve and my mom had yet to arrive. In the past year she'd begun showing up uncharacteristically late for things: Mother's Day brunch, dental appointments and, most recently, picking up her grandson from school. It was snowing hard and she didn't answer her cell phone. I pictured her Mazda in a ditch -- much the same as I did when my teenager wasn't home by curfew. My mother finally stumbled through the front door, stomping fresh snow from her feet, and I gave her a big hug of relief. But when she plopped down on the steps in the hall to pull off her puffy, black winter boots, my sister-in-law and I locked eyes in shared disbelief. OMG! Her boots are on the wrong feet! Suddenly the "mild cognitive impairment" the doctor had casually identified the previous spring didn't seem s...

Listen up fellas, partners and creatively-challenged gift givers! There’s just a few hours left to redeem yourself and come up with something that won’t force your significant other into an Oscar-worthy performance when he/she opens your present on Christmas morning.    I hate to generalize and say more men than women have a problem selecting thoughtful and loving gifts, but the evidence points in that direction. The facts also suggest that men and women disagree on what is a thoughtful gift. An informal poll of friends and acquaintances around the country turned up a surprising number of auto-related gifts under the tree, including a gas can (Ohio), windshield wipers (Kansas) and a hurricane survival kit (Florida). One of those givers shared this logic with his wife: “You spend so much time in your car alone and I just want you to be safe.” Okay, so those auto gifts are thoughtful in a way… but that kind of thoughtfulness, as one receiver so well put it, is more appreci...