Christmas Guilty Pleasures, Part 1

December is such a special month.  It’s the most wonderful time of the year!  It’s the time for Christmas.  It’s the time for family.  It’s the time for gift giving and receiving.  For feeling warm and cozy and snuggly.  For sitting around the Christmas tree, wrapped in your Snuggie (or did you get the original, the Slanket), sipping hot cocoa (or perhaps a hot toddy, depending how much stress you experienced at the mall that day), under the spell of the Christmas lights.  Just lovely!  But something that warms my heart even more at this time of year, something even more special, is that this is the season for… guilty pleasures.  Shopping in the middle of the day!  Buying fancy clothes that you’ll only wear once!  Decorating your house with beautiful, tacky things covered with jewels and glittered pine cones!  Wearing large brooches covered with miniature jewels and pine cones!  Christmas cookies! Gingerbread!  Candy Canes!  Sweets of all kinds, really.  (My husband, Steve, would put fruitcake first on that list.  Not I.  But I respect his choice—especially since it means more peppermint bark, say, for me.)  And maybe even better than all those goodies is the guiltiest pleasure of all, available only this month:   December TV!  And no, I’m not referring to all those “very special presentations,” or so the announcers love to tell us, at this most special time of year.  A very special “Two and a Half Men.”  Please tune in tonight for a heartwarming, “Dexter.”  No, no, no.  Those aren’t for me.  Those involve guilt sans pleasure, in my book.  Actually, not even guilt.  Just the sans pleasure part.

What I’m talking about are two very specific TV pleasures. The first?  Oprah’s Favorite Things. 

Here she is...

       

Let me explain.

For the past who knows how many years, Oprah has been handing out stuff to ladies all a-twitter with the gimme-gimme, er, Christmas spirit.  And it’s a blast to watch!  I admit it!  I’ve even wished I were one of the lucky ones in her audience, a time or two.  Why is this fun?  I’m not sure.  I think it has something to do with feeling like, by having some of the stuff that Oprah herself loves, you’ve now got a direct connection to the amazing, luxurious, perfect life that we imagine Oprah lives (perfect, that is, with the exception of her mysterious relationship with this Steadman person).

In case you’ve been off the planet for the last ten years and aren’t familiar with just what Oprah’s Favorite Things is (or are?), here’s the deal.  Each year, on one of her shows in December (and no one knows ahead of time exactly when it will be, thereby avoiding insanity and out and out law-breaking while women do everything they can to score a ticket), Oprah presents us with a list of products she has fallen in love with.  She has them all in the studio and on stage with her, complete with models when appropriate, and not only does she demonstrate the product, but—and here’s the key—she gives every single person in the audience the product.  Not just, “There’s a little something under your chair, audience members!” but, rather, every single person gets every single item.  Every item!  Sounds neat, huh?  (Especially if you’re in the audience.)  But wait, there’s more.  Because in case you’ve forgotten (or have been away from the planet, and you know who you are, Sir Richard Branson and Mark Kelly), Oprah Winfrey (yes, she does have a last name!) is one of the wealthiest self-made women in the world.  In the world!  (Well done, Oprah!)  So while her favorite things might include such charming items as Josh Groban’s latest Christmas album and her all-time favorite chicken pot pie, there are also items that qualify as a bit more than charming.  I’m talking diamond earrings, a fridge with a built-in TV (I’m not exactly sure of the practical usefulness of this item, but man, it’s cool!), and yes, even a car!  As you can imagine, it’s quite a show.

Actually, over the last few years, the status of this as a guilty pleasure has become somewhat tarnished for me.  So much so that I might have to say, at this point, that Oprah’s Favorite Things used to be an annual guilty pleasure.  Because in the last year or two it’s just become kind of repulsive, with not much pleasure.  A repulsive non-pleasure.  Yikes.  See, the frenzy has grown from year to year, so that by now, the women in the audience are already rabid before they even take their lucky little seats.  So by now it’s just all these women becoming hysterical because they’re getting FREE STUFF.  "I don't know what it is, but oh my GOD, it's FREE!"  "Free!  Free!  Free!" is their rallying cry.  (So much for Oprah's goal of empowering women to be self-reliant, independent creatures.)  Now I realize some of it is really great—I can understand, for example, crying over the pair of diamond earrings or even the oversized scented soaps (they’re very pretty)—but the frenzy obviously just becomes about the FREE STUFF, with gals sobbing and hyperventilating (and EMTs on call back stage, I kid you not) over a Kenny G Christmas album, for God’s sake.  True!  So this has actually transitioned from a guilty pleasure into a Thing to Avoid Seeing At All Costs.

Oh, look!  A man slipped in!

So I stopped watching.  But in my own personal little rule book I am allowed—compelled, in fact—to go on Oprah.com afterward and devour the List of Things.  (Which is why I feel like this is still, after all, a current guilty pleasure.)  And it’s still fun!  Even more so, really, to enjoy the stuff without having to suffer through the hysteria and tears.  Or someone else’s hysteria and tears, at least.

OMG

And now that the Oprah Show has run its course, this year I went and bought her magazine--now the only place to see those Favorite Things. And guess what?  They were b-o-o-o-ring.  Boring.  How can that be?  You tell me: Can you whip up a frenzy of excitement over a Christmas ornament with an artist’s weird rendering of your dog’s face on it?  Or the champagne that Jay-Z sent Oprah?  (Good lord, does she really need to name drop?  She’s Oprah, for heaven’s sake.  And who exactly is Jay-Z, again?)  Mugs that look like they were made by a child?  (They were not.)  A canvas briefcase for $485?  And to add insult to injury, they weren’t even all Oprah’s favorites.  I feel cheated!  She apparently thinks we’re interested in what other people think is neat.  People who aren’t bazillionaires, who don’t wear great clothes and have many beautiful houses and many cute pets.  People who aren't even on any of the Forbes lists.  Do I really want to know what Dr. Oz, for heaven’s sakes, classifies as a favorite thing?  Or Peter Walsh, the organizer guy?  Suze Orman?  (Well, maybe Suze.  I kind of like her mix of compassion and no-nonsense straight-forwardness.  Maybe I would like to see her stuff.

I like Suze

But come on, it’s not going to be in the same category as Oprah’s, for sure.) And I’ve never even heard of Adam Glassman--why would I want his input?  Cat Cora?  Val Monroe?  Who are these people? I don’t know, but I can tell you who they are not:  Oprah. 

So, lesson learned.  I can stash that guilty pleasure away forever.  That’s going to save me some time next Christmas.  And the cost of one magazine, to boot.  How cool is that!

But my #1 all-time favorite, never-ending, years long Guilty Pleasure, something even better than Oprah’s Favorite Things, is still out there.   

And I’ll tell you all about it next time.