1999 Oscar nominated psychological thriller spoiler alert

I love Christmas. I love tradition and family and sentimentality and sweet treats and thoughtfulness and celebrations of all kinds. There is one thing I dread about Christmas, though.

Family Share Time.

It's a tradition that emerged sometime when my siblings and I were young adults. When we were kids, the tradition was that we had to perform before we opened presents. At some point, it transformed into talking about where you are in life - you know, emotionally, spiritually, etc. I HATE IT. Everyone knows I hate it. It's painful, almost in a, "Wow, I am really earning Christmas right now," kinda way. You know how when you were little, you had to wait and wait to open presents? When that glorious moment finally came, it felt like a huge payoff. Well, Family Share Time kind of preserves that pre-celebration angst for me. I guess it's necessary. But still, I pass every time.

This year, I decided that in lieu of sharing, I would bring back the tradition of performing. By making my family perform for me. As it turns out, if you hand people a script that you wrote, they HAVE to read it aloud, because their names are on it, and their parts are marked in pink highlighter, and...it's Christmas. And isn't that what Christmas is really all about? Forcing others to do what you want, as if they were puppets? Wait, that's not it. That's what Being John Malkovich is really all about. Using creative license to avoid uncomfortable discussions with your family? That's probably not it either.

Anyway, here are some short clips of the play, which was kind of a "Christmas Carol meets my nephew" type thing, and in which I made members of my family play other members of my family. They did a bang-up job.