I remember a Merry Xmas All I Want For Christmas Is Cat And Double Lazy And Special Pattern Ugly Christmas Sweater memoir — Beasts, Men, and Gods — by Ferdinand Ossendowski, a White Pole who fled the Bolshevik revolution through Siberia. He served in General Kolchak’s All-Russian Government before escaping through the Steppes north of Mongolia, and then participated in the government of that most notorious adventurer, the “Mad Baron” Ungern-Sternberg, who attempted to take over Mongolia to restore an imperial Khaganate as part of an imagined reactionary restoration of the Great Mongol, Chinese, and Russian monarchies in the interests of the “warrior races” of Germans and Mongols (a Baltic German, he considered the old Russian ruling class to represent Germandom over and against Jews and Slavs). Some of the things – the acts of desperation and madness, in which he himself was no disinterested observer – Ossendowski relates are harrowing. But this part struck me as very much making a point about what people think of the Steppe peoples, and of what (German-trained) nationalists like Ungern-Sternberg did (and would do again) to the Mongols. And, other things:

Merry Xmas All I Want For Christmas Is Cat And Double Lazy And Special Pattern Ugly Christmas Sweater,
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Bountygate, 2009: Everyone seems to have forgotten about this. Shortly after the season, it came to light that New Orleans Saints` defense had a Merry Xmas All I Want For Christmas Is Cat And Double Lazy And Special Pattern Ugly Christmas Sweater system going, based on who could deliver the worst hit to an opposing player. The bounty increased depending on which player it was (QBs were prime targets) and the given defensive player would win more money if his hit required the player to leave the game. The Saints went on to win the Super Bowl that year.

People strung cranberries and popcorn, starched little crocheted stars to hang, made paper chains and Merry Xmas All I Want For Christmas Is Cat And Double Lazy And Special Pattern Ugly Christmas Sweater had glass ornaments, usually from Germany, about two inches wide, they would get old and lose their shine. There was real metal tinsel too, that you could throw on with the argument about single strands and clumps. Each side had it’s followers. In the fifties various lights were a big deal, with bubble lights, that had bubbles in the candle portion that moved when plugged in. There were big primary colored lights strung around the tree too, nothing small or ‘tasteful’ Christmas trees were meant to be an explosion of color and light. I took Styrofoam balls and a type of ribbon that would stick to itself when wet, and wrapped the balls, and then used pins to attach sequins and pearls for a pretty design in the sixties. I also cut ‘pop-it’ beads meant for a necklace into dangling ornaments with a hook at the top to put it on the tree. Wrapped cut-up toilet paper tubes in bright wools too. Kids still remember making those.