My Favorite Christmas Commercials

Today was a hard day after a hard week, and once again, I’m wiped out. Therefore I will reach into my bag of emergency entries, er, classic holiday cheer, and attest that these are my favorite Christmas commercials of all time.

This one came out the year I was born. I love it because of its simple animation and of course, the birds. The story gets me every time. Birds bring us their music. How lovely to offer them some of ours in return, instead of taking their homes. Birds LOVE music, too, so this story isn’t too far off the mark. If I go out on the balcony and my little friends are not around, I need only to whistle a tune and the Sparrows emerge from the holly bushes, fly up into the tree, and look down at me with their heads cocked in curiosity as they wait for their snacks.

Then there is this classic, the Hershey’s Kisses commercial. I feel like it’s not the holiday season until I see it. The original came out in the late 1980s. I loved it then, and I love it now.

And finally, this commercial for Coke from 1970. It was right on time, coming out of the 1960s with their call for peace, love, happiness, and civil rights. But given how far this country still has to go, in some ways, it seems ahead of its time. It’s also the only song I can play on the piano.

Holiday Chirp

Whoops! Got carried away watching The Game Awards tonight and almost forgot to write. Fortunately, I always have a few ideas for emergency entries up my sleeve, and one of them is to share the wallpaper I’m using on my laptop this December. It’s from Desktop Nexus.

A bird wearing a winter hat and scarf.

Do you change your wallpaper for the holidays? If you’re stumped for an idea for a Holidailies entry, show us what it is!

The One Who Lives

Today at the cardiology practice, the nurse and I discussed the thing that burns itself into every heart attack survivor’s mind: What are the chances of it happening again?

“Very low.”

Oh, “And you WILL get back to those big walks with your friends. Just be patient. You’ll do everything you did before.”

See, there is an ugly statistic that has had me on edge since it happened: 47% of women who have a heart attack die within 5 years (page e493 of the PDF)—nearly one in two. However, I suspected, and she confirmed, that the 47% are largely those who smoke and don’t quit, who don’t exercise, who need to lose weight but don’t (argh, stuck at 10 pounds, come on, just 12 more…), who don’t take their medications, who don’t eat right, etc., and also those who are considerably older than I am or have comorbidities like uncontrolled diabetes.

So I am relieved. I’ll always be mindful and careful, and it will always be something to consider in many things I do (i.e., choosing which foods, if any, I can have while out with friends), but I am ready to look at my heart attack as one step removed from a freak occurrence.

Here’s the tree in the lobby of the cardiology practice: