I was reading a news story about another man who killed his wife and daughter, and decrying the fact it had been 19 years since the Montreal massacre and nothing had changed for women facing violence – when my husband and I had a rare disagreement. 

The Montreal massacre occurred on December 6, 1989, when 14 women were killed at the University of Montreal’s School of Engineering because they were women.

Christmas is a season of disparate, at times contradictory, messages, moods and ideas. Sacred and secular, thoughtful and trite, verisimilitude and very sentimental-- all of which are driven and fueled by the human condition, market forces, nostalgia and spiritual yearning. 

In short, it's the greatest time of the year, ever.

As I commented at this time last year, I think Christmas should be celebrated in all its disparate forms whether it be sacred or secular, from high culture or low culture. To this end as we lead up to Christmas, we're proud to bring you the WonderCafe Advent Calendar. 

I watch Project Runway on Slice—I know it’s already aired in the US but do not spoil the ending for me!—as part of an unspoken arrangement with my wife wherein she watches Doctor Who with me. We both win here; my wife enjoys the adventures of my favourite intrepid Time Lord, while I found a television program I can make derisive comments while watching and not get into trouble for it.

I am a total sucker for Christmas kitch. So this morning, when I saw that my local dollar store had already stocked half an aisle with glitzy Santa window stickers, snow-scene cookie cans, and enough tinsel garland to bedeck the entire Canadian Boreal forest, I immersed myself in post-Hallowe’en heaven. Feeling like a raven – a bird impressed by twinkly things and not to discerning in the taste department – I found a total score: a bucket of hard-candy-and-plastic rings in the shape of a snowman head, a red stocking, a Santa head, and the cutest thing ever, a mini fat Christmas tree complete with decorations. I had to have them. Especially because they were only a dollar.

Alas, my giddy Christmas trip came crashing down when I researched the ingredients. Sugar, corn syrup and water, all okay. But the next ingredient, titanium dioxide, was found in 2006 to be a “possible carcinogen to humans” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer – an agency dominated by scientists, rather than paranoid moms like me. So it’s a warning that should be taken seriously. Further down, the ingredients include “artificial flavour” and “artificial colour,” but the packaging doesn’t say which ones... let alone whether they’re suspected of, say, causing cancer. Merry Christmas to me.

As a writer who always works on a computer, I love to take weekend studio tours to savour the shapes and colors of artists’ work. It’s a great visual antidote to my grey world of Word documents, and I always return feeling refreshed and ready to write again. 

Ever since the US Republicans announced Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will run as John McCain’s pick as Vice President, the media has been all over her for abandoning her five children. Here’s just a sample: 

"Children with Down syndrome require an awful lot of attention,” said CNN’s John Roberts. “The role of Vice President, it seems to me, would take up an awful lot of her time, and it raises the issue of how much time will she have to dedicate to her newborn child?"