How to Get Theo James to Love You This Holiday Season
the ultimate christmas starter pack ☼ breaking down the holiday magic ☼ favorite xmas movies, songs and snacks
How much do you love Christmas? Probably less than me, bitch. Perdóname, this isn’t a competition. But if it were a competition I’d wipe the floor with your Betty Crocker ass that only bakes sugar cookies in December and strings up lights when the weather gets cold. My lights are always up, more reliable than the speed at which a Little Caesars Pizza goes stale. I just need you to understand that Christmas is one of the core ingredients to my entire personality, in that it sustains my sense of hope for life—and thus my sense of self—from January to December, which is another way of saying that Christmas is what keeps me alive at every hour of every day in whatever corner of the globe I am standing in, most often and most woefully not the North Pole.
Here, I have put together a list of all of the things I love about Christmas. I have compiled the best movies and songs and snacks that roast the chestnuts in my heart and keep my nuts from cracking. These findings are comprised of decades of research, playing said movies and songs so many times that it is still up to debate whether or not my partner Mijael married himself into an insane asylum. Mijael might say that I am obsessed with Christmas, that my relationship to it is abnormal, which is another way of saying that he is a loser in the competition of holly jolly joy. I should acknowledge that I most likely inherited my love for Christmas from my dad, who taught me that it was okay to play Mariah Carey’s Merry Christmas in October and leave the lights up till spring, and who, after eating an entire tub of ice cream or plate of peanut butter cookies, boasts a close resemblance to Santa Claus.
Christmas is everything. Christmas came before science. Christmas is the original god, the original sin—besides the fact that it is Jesus’ birthday, which seems irrelevant, considering I am not religious—it is everything good and bad and beautiful and boring: giving (gifts, time with family) and sacrificing (money, sanity) and performing acts of gluttony (gorging ourselves with food and wine, laying around doing absolutely nothing) all at once. It is capitalism at its worst and best: inboxes glittered with scam-worthy sales from companies that deserve a slop full of side-eye from anyone who cares about the climate crisis, gifts wrapped under the tree from family members who rarely return until pine can be smelled around the house. It is family and friendship, solitude and reflection, and—contrary to popular belief—the season with the lowest suicide rates of the year. Periodt!
Without further ado, here are my favorite things about Christmas, the best Christmas movies, the best Christmas songs, and the best Christmas snacks…
☃︎ favorite xmas things ☃︎
Stocking gifts that you will never use — The magic of a stocking gift resides not in the quality of the gift itself, but the act of burying your hands into a decorated sock sized for an ogre and pulling out random trinkets, things you’ve seen laying around the house and things you may or may not have gifted someone in your family the year before. Another bottle opener, thanks mom! Socks as thin as a free condom from a college fair, thanks Santa Claus (who is also mom)! A candy bar that I saw laying around the house, thanks Santa’s Elf (who is still mom)!
Awkward conversations with relatives you should know better — Family is a funny thing. On one hand, it’s like: We’re blood! Some of us have known each other longer than the dwindling career of she who shall not be named, some of us have seen each other grow from the half-personality of a teenager into the full personhood of an adult. On the other hand, it’s like: We’re family, time to act like the versions of ourselves that don’t scream at 4AM in the club or talk about getting pegged in a bathroom or lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling after work (hoping that it will fall and crush us) or vent about our kids and our husbands and our lives over several glasses of wine. How have you been since last Christmas? Good, you? Good. Silence and several sips of cheap champagne. My favorite part about the awkward conversations, though, is that they only seem awkward when you, yourself, are the awkward one—or, in my personal history, fourteen or seventeen or twenty years old, unable to sit with silence—or simple conversation—in comfort. Now that I am approaching thirty and the end of the prime of my life comfortable confidence of adulthood, it feels like I do know my relatives, even if there is still room for all of us to know each other better. That’s what the awkward conversations are for. Awkward buds turn into beautiful blossoms!
Flirting with diabetes — There is nothing more Christmas than wondering if you are shedding off a few years of your life by shoving another goliath sized slice of pie into your mouth, sandwiched between two cookies shaped like snowmen (now a slush of sugary dough) and another bite of stuffing (now a slush of salty starch). As my partner always says, once you have something sweet you should have something salty, and once you have something salty you should have something sweet, and by that logic you can spend the next three days continuing to shuffle between the dessert and the mains until nothing remains of the Christmas dinner or your stomach ruptures and you die, whichever comes first.
The holiday hangover (on the 26th or 25th, depending on when you celebrate) — The only redeemable hangover is the hangover after Christmas, precisely because our ability to flirt with diabetes remains. Christmas dessert is one step below Christmas dessert the next morning. I have never robbed a bank or slept with a married man (aside from my married man—AYYYY), but I imagine that both still fall short of the delicious itch of naughtiness satisfied by eating pie for breakfast. You crawl into the kitchen in a tired slouch, pour yourself a hot cup of coffee and take your seat at the table of holiday degenerates, shoveling another piece of the pie or cake or strudel you regretted eating two servings of the night before. Today, there is no regret. Today was designed for a hangover. It is still cold and everything still looks festive, but it’s over. The presents are opened and the guests are gone. It is both depressing and fulfilling at once: Now we have to wait another year. In a few days, we will walk into another year. For now, though, it is just us and whoever we are with, the television and a day where we all are—or should be—disintegrating into the couch. If you wake up early and go for a run the day after Christmas, you are, by all means, a certified psychopath.
Primary colors barfed on everything everywhere all at once — Growing into this day and time is depressing and scary and unprecedented: all time high temperatures, a buffoon made of Cheez Its for a president, tornadoes and tsunamis in California, multiple genocides carried out by the Israeli state without consequence. You know what is not unprecedented? The colors red, blue, green, yellow and orange, splattered around houses, trees, walls and shelves like flowers in the spring. We need a break. We cannot be saturated by the bleak reality of the world every day of the year. If there is anything magical about Christmas, it is that it brings a magic we can expect: a feeling, an event, an aesthetic. It adds some stability to the otherwise very unstable human experience. You know what lifts me out of the existential spiral of wondering if, and how, the climate crisis will ever be reversed if the major corporations that fuel the majority of C02 emissions are never held responsible? Iridescent lights strung around poorly chopped branches. A string of illumination around an ashy storefront. Lights here, there, everywhere. (Do not talk to me about how iridescent lights are less environmentally friendly. If 100 companies have been responsible for 71% of global greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, THE PEOPLE GET TO HAVE THIS.)
⋆⁺₊ best xmas movies ⁺₊⋆
The Elf — New York on Christmas. Will Ferrel and Zooey Deschanel. That actress who always plays the mom and does it so well. Daddy issues fixed in 97 minutes. No further explanation needed.
Happiest Season — THIS MOVIE ROCKS. The first time I watched it, I was like: Oh! OH! WE HAVE OUR OWN CHRISTMAS MOVIE. TWO LESBIANS AND A GAY TAKE THE SPOTLIGHT! I adore this movie with all of my heart. While it does lack representation (the whole cast is white as snow, the majority of them—besides Kristen Stewart and Dan Levy are straight), there is warmth to be found in seeing a queer narrative on the screen, especially in the setting of a holiday rom-com. Year after year, this film is becoming my go-to over my other favorite pastimes, the biggest of which follows…
The Holiday — Despite my coming into a sense of Asian and queer personhood over the past several years, I still manage to watch this movie at least five times before November. It is a cis-typical, white Christmas movie, but it vibrates a part of me that no other movie can. Maybe it is the too-relatable narrative of unrequited love that starry-eyed, calm-souled Kate Winslett suffers through, a narrative I struggled with for the twenty years of my closeted life. Or maybe it is the familiarity of Cameron Diaz as an actress herself, flooding my heart with warm memories of watching Charlie’s Angels one Christmas with my grandparents in Lake Tahoe, promptly falling in love with Lucy Liu (the kind of love where you want to be someone, not sleep with them). Or maybe it is seeing the warm, festive weather of Los Angeles contrasted with the cozy depths of a British winter. Or maybe it is the soundtrack, created by Hans Zimmer and Heitor Pereira, not that those names mean anything to me, considering I just googled them, but it is, by all means, an incredible soundtrack, which makes sense, since I recognized Hans Zimmer as a famous name. The songs Gumption and For Nancy were composed for the people who believe in little moments that feel larger than life—sipping coffee on a Tuesday morning, running with your best friend in the dead of winter from one bar to another, dancing around the kitchen beneath the scent of half-baked pastries, reading a newsletter from your favorite person in the entire world.
Love, Actually — Here is the only other cis-typical, white Christmas movie I will watch over and over and over. For me, it falls one step below The Holiday, yet still sits amongst the most iconic holiday films: the cast, the story lines, the irresistible London aesthetic! I love Emma Roberts more than any other British actress whose name I can actually remember, not to mention Kiera Knightly or the man who was also Snape or Hugh Grant, who I definitely fell asleep fantasizing to several nights as a teenager, though now he kind of just looks like a saggy rottweiler in the form of a man, my original infatuation as lost as the plot of the sex stand-ins who fall in love with each other. The fourth time Mijael and I watched it, Mijael was like: why are they even in the movie? And even though I was ready to cuss him out and deliver a seven hour thesis as to why every story mattered, I realized: Oh, why are they in the movie? And then there is the obvious tear-jerking compilation of airport scenes from Heathrow, a montage that spoke to my soul when I recently picked up my mother, father and mother-in-law from the Benito Juarez airport last month. There is so much anticipation built up behind waiting for someone behind the gate, watching other people—families, couples, kids, adults—wait for their loved ones, too. Even thinking about it makes me want to SEEP FROM MY EYES. It’s like, WOW: HERE WE ALL ARE, JUST HAPPY TO BE HERE WITH EACH OTHER!
The Grinch (2018) — The original Grinch is an amazing movie, but the animated version with the soundtrack by Pharell speaks to me on another level. The way that Cindy Liu’s character evolved into a badass, fearless child? The way that the Grinch and his dog somehow became beautiful and aesthetic, as opposed monstrous and gross? The way that the animation itself comes to life with every speck of snow and lick of light!? 10/10.
The Christmas Movie — I am including this so no basic bitches whine their basic bitchc complaints. The Christmas Movie is probably the movie I associate most with my childhood, even though I don’t really like it that much. All I know is that it played every single year on repeat on cable (and then satellite) television, which means I have seen it 1,000 times.
Single All the Way — An honorable mention, considering it is one of the few queer (read: gay) Christmas movies available (unless you’re on Pornhub watching santa fuck an elf). In all honesty, this movie is not amazing, but it is a) studded with scenes of Jennifer Coolidge being Jennifer Coolidge and b) gay! Which means that it is enough, for the sake of representation and sprinkling the presence of Queen Coolidge herself into your holiday weekend.
Smiley’s (Series) — This is the only series on the list because every other recommended Christmas series on Netflix seems to be the same story but in different languages with different actors, and it’s like…Why? Why do I need to watch a hetero Swedish Christmas series in the first place? And then the same hetero series in Italian? That’s not the representation we want, Netflix! Luckily, we have Smiley’s: a beautiful story about two gay men who fall in love in Spain and stumble over their insecurities, all the way up to Christmas (and New Year’s).
❅ go-to xmas playlists ❅
Here are my ten favorite Christmas songs, selected for variety.
Here is my favorite Christmas playlist to throw on when I am feeling too manic and in need of a calm-me-down.
Here is my favorite Christmas playlist to throw on when I want to celebrate Christmas with friends and family.
✩ legendary xmas snacks ✩
Sugar-free Hot Cocoa (raw cocoa powder + hot milk) — I know what you’re thinking: You organic, grass-fed, California cunt. SUGAR-FREE cocoa!? Since when was it a crime to enjoy our Hershey’s hot chocolate instead of wallowing in self-hatred as we sip on bitter ass cow juice mixed with raw cocoa powder, the fuck? But hear me out: If it’s sugar-free, if it is literally just cocoa with milk, you can drink SO MUCH OF IT. You can drink this hot cocoa at every hour of the day. And the benefits of raw cocoa powder!??? GIRL. DO YOU EVEN KNOW!? RAW COCOA POWDER is packed with PROTEIN, ANTIOXIDANTS, MINERALS and THEOBROMINE, which sounds like Theo James, who I think about whenever I am not thinking about Mijael. AKA skin on fleek, ass getting phatter in all the right places so Theo James might actually one day notice you. Milk itself has enough sugar in it for the combination to taste delicious, and instead of dosing yourself with heinous amounts of fructose you’re dosing yourself with NATURE’S NECTAR. It is important to note that I am saying COCOA powder, not CACAO powder, which is literally bitter AF, more Timothee Chalamet with a bald head looking like Dobby from the streets than Theo James with his thick candy cane dick forearms and beautiful forehead.
Star-shaped shortbread cookies — I imagine this is like a child’s verison of crack cocaine (because I have never done crack cocaine, not because I am no longer a child).
Sugar cookies made by your mom because they were made by your mom — Periodt. Or if not your mom, then someone who has mom energy (which can also be you, queen).
Those oreo-like cookies with chocolate around them — JESUS SNOWMEN WITH BIG ORANGE CARROTS (BOC), these cookies are so good. I do not remember the last time I fell THIS in love with a commercial cookie since those frosted animal crackers that we fiended over like cocaine in grade school. I suppose the secret here is a mound of chocolate around a cookie. ‘Tis the season to sugar coat EVERYTHING. ☷
Note: This week’s edition of Sleepover was sent a little early, because…Well, it would have been depressing to send a letter about Christmas after Christmas. Moving forward, we will resume with the regular schedule: A new letter every other Thursday!
With love,
Your favorite capybara ~ AKA Travis Zane
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