What are you doing for Christmas this year?  Expecting any good gifts?  Nailed that "to give" list down yet?

Bakin' up a lasagna to bring over to the family for lunch.  Peppermint Cheesecake Brownies for dessert.  Then I've a movie date with Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

Of course, I'm not in a position to outright ask for anything (an unfortunate downside to being a quote-unquote adult), but I did express a keen interest in The Art of Princess and the Frog.  Likewise, I saw this one at my local bookstore, and it looks like a winner.

A gift basket full of Teavana tea products for Mom.  A portable Bose iPod speaker set for Sis.  A Ben Sherman shirt/pants ensemble that my brother wanted during his trip here in the summer.  A trendy scarf and hat set for my sister in law.  And a gaggle of board games, educational games (go Brain Quest!), and DVD movies for the young cousins and niece.

I've decided not to go to my mother's family Christmas again; even if I'm working or not. Ever since my uncle died a few years ago from cancer, the whole event is nothing but a walking, living Christmas letter for how perfect my aunt's family is. Oh, you spent this much on this? Like I care.... Oh, your daughter did this, and this, and this.... yawn. If I'm working, I'd rather have the money; being fake towards shopping strangers is easier than tolerating plastic family members. But seriously, what is it about religion that makes some people think they need to brodcast their happiness to such a unrealistic level?

Outside that, I just plan to spend actual Christmas day with my sister, father and mother. I do hope my father gets his packages before UPS and the USPS close, he waited too long to order stuff and he's been in a bad mood ever since he found out some of the gifts he purchased may not make it on time. Unfortunately, he doesn't know I know so I can't really go up to him and say it's ok.

Christmas '09. '08 was a disgusting hell.

Family lives out of province, and they keep trying to guilt trip me and everyone else in the family to visit them, but I don't have the scratch to finance a trip so far out right now, so that is not an option (why on Earth did you ever decide to move right into the middle of f---ing nowhere, ma?). I miss my little brother immensely, so I'm rather torn about it.

My estranged other half of the family live on the other end of the city. These are people I'd rather not associate with fully, and being that we haven't spoken in close to five years, their recent invitation for me to join them this year baffles me. They know why I said no flat out.

My girlfriend blindly decided to move out to Edmonton a few months back, she's coming into town to see her family, I'll be spending Christmas eve with them. I don't anticipate having much fun; Being that they come from an entirely different world than I, I'll have to work doubly hard to impress them. I've opted to bake them a nice cake. Nothing too fancy, but it'll show my good will.

Christmas day would've been spent cold and alone, but it looks like one of my boys is in the same boat, so we've decided to make a day of it. He's house sitting for his older brother, so we've got a nice set-up there. He missed out on Silent Hill 2, we'll probably play through that shit. Got some movies on my laptop (affectionately named A.L.I.C.E., for the operating system of the same name in Gundam Sentinal) we'll probably be checking out. It'll be like guys' night out, only with less fist-pounding.

As for gifts? I got some real nice earrings for my girl, my mom and her boyfriend are getting this gigantic bag of delicious flavoured coffee (unground, I guess they got a new machine they wanna try making coffee with), I'm getting my little sister a copy of "Blankets" by Craig Thompson (excellent book, I encourage you all to read it), and my little brother is getting a copy of Metroid Prime Trilogy for the Wii (I was thinking Muramasa, my game of the year, but that can wait until his birthday in January).

Much the same as anyone else's, I'd wager: spending time with family, then drinking to recover

I really feel like Chinese food
Chinese food and X-mas so go together

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTq20prt0K8

HAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh wow. Avatar wins. Flawless victory.

Sons of bitches! Bumpuses!

FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDGE

Only I didn't say fudge.

Spending the day at my sister's again, should be fun and swollen with 4-player gaming. The only thing I know I'm getting is a copy of New Mario Wii, because one of the people I bought a copy for already HAS one courtesy of her grandparents, so Merry Christmas to me, I suppose. Not expecting much gamewise, because I kind of went wild throughout the year and didn't leave much on the shelf (then there's that whole dead-PS3 thing).
I got my sister the new DS Zelda, because she tore through the first like a fiend unleashed while I continue to grapple with the controls, and she likes it that way. Mom gets a Patriots sweatshirt, Dad gets a book because the game I got him last year (a Galactic Civilizations Box Set) still hasn't been opened. inFamous for my brother-in-law, and my nephews and niece get the other New Mario Wii copy, an Insectosaurus toy, and singing Sesame Street toy, respectively.

The best intangible gift though, is that hours at my workplace revert to normal and I'm no longer expected to be part of the post-closing clean-up. Woohoo!

Spending time with family back home this time in Redcliff, just outside Medicine Hat, for the last time, as the family's going to be moving to Edmonton next summer.  No other real gamers in my family other than me so it's a book and a church for my Dad's Christmas Village he sets up every year - which is slowly turning into a town.  Mom gets some Harry Potter blu-ray's and a nice piece of pottery.  Brother gets a fondue set, and his wife gets an immersion blender.  My grandmother is getting a "Learn Colloquial Hungarian" cd set as she feels she's lost touch with her roots.  As for me, I asked for some games, but who knows what I'll actually end up getting.  I'm mostly glad for the time off work (Dec 23 - Jan 3) and the free food haha! =p

My family always celebrates Christmas on the Eve... so I'll be going out there tomorrow afternoon for the usual dinner and then presents. I'm hoping it'll be relatively drama-free. You never know with my family.

On Christmas Day, I'll be going back and forth between family friends.

I'll be bringing the family over to my mom's on Christmas Day. Just hanging out in comfy clothes and taking it easy. My eldest daughter (almost three) is really excited about Christmas but she has convinced herself that Santa will bring her a real live elephant so she's in for a disappointment.

Oh, and a Happy Christmas to all of my soundtrack central friends! Or whichever holiday you choose to go for if you don't do Christmas. Amazing to think how long some of us have been here (as brought up in a thread a while back) and while we don't all know each other in person (some do I guess) and some of us don't post all that much (well, I don't), it actually means more than you might think to have a place with so many familiar names and such quality posters as there are here. You guys rock.

Happy Christmas!

I mentioned before how I asked Santa for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game, right?  I mean, the ENTIRE arcade cabinet.  And my nine year old brain was going, "Boy, I hope his sleigh doesn't get bogged down TOO badly."

I can't recall if I was still dense enough to ask for Turtles In Time two years later.

I just got my Christmas card from my cousin on this side and wow, talk about beating a dead horse - seeing "Have a Merry Jesusmus" makes me wonder how far this can go - the name of the holiday already has "Christ" in it!

I'm going to help recover all the dead people in chimneys. Enough of the Santa impersonators get stuck to warrant recovery efforts. I pulled a few out last year and boy were they grimy; the presents were still good, so I took 'em. Every now and then, just sometimes...someone hears them scream. And we get them out just fine. But first we stand up there for a while, you know, so we can spit on them.

As lucky as lucky can be eh? lol

My plans are: Relax tonight (and get my FLAC files all loaded up on my new external HD), family party tomorrow night, watch Steelers-Ravens on Sunday, then chill with friends the rest of Sunday and all day Monday. Oh yeah, and get paid for both Friday and Monday. Wheeeee!

Christmas isn't a national Holiday in Japan, so the missus is at work, and I'm at home in front of my PC doing some videogame-related translation (Scoop: Fatal Fury is coming to PSN with online support)

We had some good dinners and cake this week though, if that counts

Are you even allowed to say that kind of thing? 

Also, one of my regrets for never having been in Japan for Christmas during the time when I lived there is that I never tried the fabled Christmas cake.  It's relatively similar to like a Fujiya cake with strawberries on it, though, isn't it?

No, I'm not
I figured noone's gonna find out here.
I'm not gonna take any risks by posting it on Kotaku or something though

Yeah, Christmas Cake is just Cream and Strawberries mostly (although there's Chocolate cakes too I believe), with some Christmas-y ornaments on top. In fact, pretty much every cake seems to contain strawberries in this country :S

Oh man, I remember trying a strawberries & cream slice of cake as a desert at a HOT DOG joint of all places, and it was the best tasting slice I'd had in YEARS!

Japan knows how to do Strawberries & Cream VERY WELL.  It was so tasty I wanted to go back to the counter to ask if I could buy an ENTIRE PIE of that stuff.

Christmas turned out to be way better than expected. Christmas Eve was spent with my woman's relatives. I completely expected a cold reception, but I was welcomed into the clan with open arms. Maybe it was the delicious coconut cake I baked for the proceedings that helped it along, but being that I'm dating the youngest in their family, I certainly was at least expecting to get a bit of a cold shoulder. Fun times were had by all.

Then Christmas day was spent at my buddy's house. My girlfriend joined me, so it was us, my buddy and his girl. We stayed up watching movies (A History of Violence turned out to be completely underwhelming, while Riki-Oh gets exponentially more enjoyable with every viewing) and playing video games.

Boxing day saw me looking for deals all around town. My friend wanted a PS2 (he missed out), so he wanted to score one for cheap, seeing as how the PS3 is in at least it's third iteration of hardware. Didn't happen. Everywhere in town that had them were selling them for at least $120, which we both decided was way more than what we thought was reasonable. He ended up settling on a $100 one in Zellers, but he wasn't happy about it, since he had seen one for $80 a few weeks before, but passed on it at that point. We played Code Veronica and Hajime no Ippo religiously until my girlfriend left.

Among my own deals were Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and Tomb Raider Underworld (Silent Hill was $60, but I got Underworld for $5, shit was SO cash). Assuming I like Underworld, I'll pick up Anniversary and Legend if I can find them. I missed out on the next-gen Lara.

I'll be searching for a PS3 pretty soon. Anyone know if a model exists that has at least decent backwards compatibility AND is reliable? I'm not well-versed in PS3 lore.

You know what fustrates me? When you find something you'd like to give as a gift at a good price but have NO ONE to give it to!

They had Chrono Tigger DS for $11 new at Wal Mart and I was like "nice" but then realized I don't know many people with a DS let alone any of them that wouldn't already have it or are hard core RPG players.

Of course, I know I'm probably just looking for an excuse to blow money.

I just redeemed a couple of Barnes & Noble gift cards I got for Christmas for some recreational winter reading:

http://i407.photobucket.com/albums/pp15 … eading.jpg

Never did get around to rereading the Canon of Sherlock Holmes, so I'll be playing a bit of catch-up.  I'll post some shots of the Avatar book in the respective thread, but I was always curious to check out Arcade Mania!  From what I've perused so far, it's looks to be a fascinating read.  They certainly cover the gamut of genres that span Japan's vast arcade culture.  Here a small sampling of shots:

-Crane Gaming
-Sticker Booths
-Flight Sims
-Rhythm Action
-Shmups
-Fighting
-Card Battle
-Mechanical games / Yu Suzuki
-Developer's Introspective: Suda51
-Bemani / Taiko no Tatsujin
-Mahjong
-Space Invaders

Spent Christmas with the folks... my sister came in from out of town and had her fabulous dinner party with amazing food and a room full of people too smart for their own good.  Definitely one of the best times I had in 2009.

I got a rice cooker for my new house and four pints of my favorite ice cream (Jeni's of Columbus, OH).  I couldn't give much this year due to the new mortgage, but I made sure to set my sister up with Mario & Luigi 3 and Spirit Tracks so she'd have some good times on the flight home. 

For myself, I finally picked up some TV show DVDs I had been dragging my feet on as well as $20 sale copies of Metroid Prime Trilogy and A Boy and His Blob.  I paid full price for Half-Minute Hero out of fear it wouldn't be on the shelves much longer, and I grabbed Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth from WiiWare which I will talk about more in its thread.