My 30th Christmas Tree

I've always had a strange tradition around this time of year. I turn on the lights of the Christmas tree and turn off all the other lights in the house. I sit in my pj's and snuggle up in a blanket on the couch and just stare at the lights of the tree. I distinctly remember doing this as a little girl and the tradition endures even still. On this evening, I'm carrying on the tradition and staring at my 30th Christmas tree.

December has always been a magical month for me. A birthday at the beginning of the month and my favorite holiday at the end. A whole month of celebrating, beauty, happiness, presents, decorations, beautiful lights and family. What's not to love?

As I stare at my 30th Christmas tree, it strikes me as the complete opposite of so many of my trees growing up. They were huge and covered in multi-colored blinking lights. They had hand-made ornaments adorning them and I spend hours rearranging the ornaments to perfection and scouting out the presents underneath. My tree this year is about 5 feet tall and is simply adorned with white lights, red berries and gold leaves. It is a grownup tree. There is no childish wonder and fascination, just a subdued elegance and a simplicity due to being too tired for more effort. Looking at this tree makes me realize how utterly 30 years can change a person.

As a child, I couldn't get the tree up fast enough. I would have put it up the day after Thanksgiving if I could convince my parents. I wanted the biggest tree and I wanted it to be completely drenched in lights and ornaments. I wanted incessant Christmas music. When I got a set of lights for my birthday to decorate the outside of our house, I literally bounced off the walls with excitement. As an adult, I kept forgetting to get a tree. Life has been busy and I keep thinking "It'll only be up for 3 weeks!! So much work . . . should I even bother?" The main reason I got my 30th Christmas tree this year is in memory of that little girl. I remember the magic and wonder that I felt growing up. I can literally close my eyes and see my younger self cuddled up many years ago and staring at her 8th Christmas tree . . . her 12th Christmas tree.

As I hit this slightly significant milestone in life, I will try to remember that you are only as old as you feel inside. I can close my eyes and reach back to find my younger self, filled with wonder and possibilities . . . the girl with the big imagination, silly and lovely dreams, and a tradition of staring at the beauty of a softly lit tree and taking it all in.

Fifty Shades of Crazy

This past Wednesday, I was browsing online and wandered across an article on Entertainment Weekly that was talking about popular books being made into movies. It had a picture of the Hunger Games on it, so I clicked on it in mild curiosity. As I browsed down the books listed, I came upon a title I’d never heard of; Fifty Shades of Grey. Hmmm, intriguing title . . . kind of mysterious. Instead of finishing the article, I looked it up on Goodreads, wanting to see some reviews. It had a lot of polarizing reviews, and I decided to read the description.

As I read through the summary, this thought went through my head . . . “What the heck????”

Basically, this book is about a young, innocent college student who falls for a wealthy entrepreneur with unusual sexual proclivities. This book is categorized as erotica. Yep, erotica is on the NYT’s bestsellers list for paperbacks and ebooks.

Seriously??

Wait, it gets better.

This book was written by a woman who writes fan fiction. She finds a book that she loves and decides to write her own little fantasy story using either the world, the characters, or the theme, and taking it on her own merry little ride. In general, I find fan fiction pretty harmless. It’s the same thing as those lame videos you see on YouTube where they try and make videos out of books and patch together scenes from random movies to make a trailer. Yes, very lame. But pretty harmless. In this case, the author created fan fiction (titled Master of the Universe) based on the Twilight novel characters. Granted, she completely changed the basic story line, which involves vampires and werewolves. Instead, she makes Edward into a hot millionaire named Christian who enjoys whips and domination and Bella is an uninteresting, meek college student named Ana who completely falls for him . . . okay, that part is mostly the same.

So, this author wrote MOTU and it got rave reviews from readers of fan fiction. With such a glowing response, she decided to publish it as her own book, Fifty Shades of Grey, by changing the character names, places and a few other details.

Seriously??

According to software produced to prevent plagiarism in schools, FSOG is 89% the same as MOTU. Yep, 89% the same as a piece of work that she wrote as fan fiction and published online for free. You can now buy the ebook version for $9.99 online.

Don’t get me wrong, the Twilight series wasn’t some great work of literary expertise, but if I was Stephanie Meyers, I’d be outraged. Not only did she take her very pure, chaste characters and turn them into sex maniacs, but she had her characters in mind the whole time she was originally writing. If that isn’t a breach of intellectual property, I don’t know what is. And because these books (oh yes, it’s a trilogy) are becoming so wildly popular, they’re also making a movie out of it. Which means that every genius who’s ever written ridiculous fan fiction is suddenly going to have an “inspiration” to write their “own” book. Unbelievable.

I’d just like to add a disclaimer that I have not read Fifty Shades of Grey, nor do I intend to. I’m not a book snob; I’ll read almost anything, especially if someone recommends it to me. But I won’t curb my curiosity in the mania by supporting an author that was too lazy to develop her own characters. Sorry if that sounds harsh, it’s just my opinion. Any thoughts from my book-loving friends? Speak up in opposition, I’d love other viewpoints, especially from a legal standpoint:)