A few weeks ago, when Dan and I were decorating our Christmas tree, I asked him what his favorite Christmas song is. This turned out to be a more educational question than I had anticipated, and it resulted in one of those moments when Dan and I realize again that even though we were both raised in two-parent, multi-kid, church-going American families, there is a rather large chasm between our childhood experiences. They were both great, even idyllic childhoods, but they were very, very different.

For example: Dan, in spite of living for a good portion of his developmental years overseas on various military bases, still manages to know the basic plot lines of shows like "The A Team" and "He-Man," and can have nostalgic conversations about them, and even hum the theme songs. My family, meanwhile back in the states, got rid of our television entirely some time in the early 1990s, and even before that, we weren't allowed to watch "The Smurfs," because my dad said they were communists. I am not making that up. Ask my siblings. They will tell you. This, by the way, is why I'm not sure I could ever write a novel: Nothing I could ever make up would be more amusing than true stories from my family. (Hi, Daddy! I love you, and I am sure that you were right about the Smurfs. Weird little blue commies.)

Still, you kind of assume that there are only about 45 Christmas songs out there, and so this has to be an area of common ground. So when I asked Dan what his favorite Christmas song is, I was confused when he named a song called "Mary Did You Know?"

"What?" I said. "I've never heard that song in my life. Are you sure you've got the name right?" I was working on the theory that Dan has a tendency to get the words to songs wrong. Just the other night, we were driving home after going to dinner with some friends, when the Bon Jovi song "You Give Love a Bad Name" came on the radio, and Dan confidently sang his version of the opening words to that song: "Shot in the dark! And you're too late!" I thought our friends, Mike and Kate, were going to throw up they were laughing so hard. But back to the Christmas music.

"Yes!" Dan said. "Someone sang "Mary Did You Know?" in church every Christmas of my life I'm pretty sure. Seriously, how can you not know this song?" He even told me some of the lyrics, clearly just knowing that any minute I was going to remember this integral part of Christmas. When no lights of recognition went off in my eyes, Dan looked at me a long time and blinked, like he does when he's realizing what a good job I'm doing of passing as normal most of the time, considering that I was homeschooled for a few years and never saw "Star Wars" until I was 16.

While Dan was turning to Google to find a downloadable rendition of his song, I said that my favorite Christmas song is "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." I've loved that song since I was a little kid, which is odd, because it's kind of a somber, Old Testament reference-heavy song, not exactly "Jingle Bells" or anything that just rolls off the five-year-old tongue. (Sample line: "O come thou Rod of Jesse, free thine own from Satan's tyranny." I don't think Hallmark is going to be putting that on a Christmas card any time soon, you know?) I was telling this to Dan when he started playing me his song from various Web sites. It turns out that a million people have put this song on their Christmas albums, from Reba McEntire to Clay Aiken, and it's a good song. But still, I've just never heard it before.

When Dan was done demonstrating to me that "Mary Did You Know" is, in fact, a bona fide Christmas staple as confirmed my millions of albums sold, I told him to search and see if there are any good renditions of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel." And it turns out that once again, I am a weirdo. There are only about four recorded versions of this song that we were able to find, and they are all done in that nauseating souped-up, overdone style that plagues so much Christmas music.

I was feeling rather alienated by this until I made a purchase that reminded me that I am not alone in my weirdness. Yes, Sufjan Stevens' EP collection "Songs for Christmas" has "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" on it FOUR TIMES! This is now officially my favorite Christmas album ever. And we'll have to find a Christmas album with "Mary Did You Know?" on it too so that Dan will be happy. I'm just hoping it doesn't have to be the Clay Aiken.