If you know me, then you know I identify as a non-observant Jew who can get into the Christmas spirit with the best of the goyim. My parents are both Jewish, but growing up, we had a tree that we topped with a tinfoil covered bagel. We had many other Schuster family holiday traditions, including our dog Woofer’s Christmas sock, which was an athletic sock stuffed with all the lone or worn socks and hosiery. My Grandma Nina spent all year collecting them, then stuffed and sewed the top up to leave wrapped under the tree for Christmas morning every year he was alive (1979-1988). It was a gift he accepted with a tail-wagging, puppy-like glee (after a few minutes of the “ohhh, you shouldn’t have! What? Pour moi?” schtick, he shredded the wrapping and went to town on this thing).

For the past two decades, I have kept up a Christmas song playlist that was first created on an iPod in the early 2000s. It became like the music equivalent of sourdough starter, the mother of carol playlists, built upon throughout the year and re-sequenced. It was painstakingly transferred to streaming in recent years and kept going.