Christmas Cards!

Thanksgiving week is upon us, and my thoughts are turning to this year's Christmas cards. For most of my life, I sent scores of cards. Scores. Then, I moved to Thailand and abandoned the whole thing in favor of perpetual sunshine and summer dresses. This year I am planning to reprise my old habit, as it is the one time of year when the mailbox contains actual letters. With inky signatures. And not just bills.

I am particularly excited, because this year the cards I will send feature my own Polaroid photographs, professionally printed and available on-line at Society6. (Yes! You could send them too.)

So brush up on your penmanship and go buy some stamps!

One Horse Open Sleigh

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas surrounded by those you love, whether they are right there in the living room with you or with you in their hearts.

(and do let the wrapping paper crunch under your feet like tumble weeds all day - after all, that's the whole point of wrapping paper!)

Pretty Ribbons

When I was a wee one, at Christmas my great grandmother Alice filled her glass candy dish with ribbon candy and set it out on the end table in the living room. Nana had cheeks soft as a ripe peach and the kindest disposition of any woman ever born into my family (self humbly included).

I loved picking up the heavy lid of that candy dish and smelling the weird comingling of mint, fruit, cinnamon and Pepto-Bismol that those sugary ribbons gave off. Never really cared to eat it, but I knew Santa was circling the neighborhood when the ribbon candy made its annual appearance.

On Dasher

We've been off to visit Santa. The little man patiently waited in line to sit on the lap of the same dear Santa that he's talked to every year.  (We try to ignore that there are other "Santa strangers" out and about this time of year.)

His one wish? A Viking suit. "You mean the football team?" asked Santa. (Of course not.)

So where have I been today? At the fabric shop buying fake fur, pleather and horny buttons. (It's going to be grand!)

Candy Cane Mountain

Eleven perfect candy canes (number 12 is all over the little boy's face).

Trimming the Tree

Our tree is up. Again.

Last weekend under the influence of a mighty turkey hangover, I figured it was time to haul out the ornaments. The usual wrestling match ensued. The big guy wedged it through the door, screwed it into the tree stand, and untangled lights for a couple of hours. Then I tagged him out and started hanging hundreds of glass ornaments. All glass. And I do not exaggerate when I say hundreds.

The grumpy teenager finally pitched in (after we nailed his feet to the floor), and the kindergartener gleefully plopped things all over the lower two feet of branches. I had just sat down to admire the work with all three of them (thankfully) somewhere else, when the big guy wandered past the room. "Looks like it's leaning," he says. Looked fine to me. As I breathed a second contented sigh of thank-god-it's-done, the whole thing flopped over. Millions of glass shards everywhere. (The kindergartener loved it.)

Sigh.

And so we started all over. As I say, our tree is up. Again.

Peace

Today is the first day on the Advent calendar, and around here we have gleefully begun the countdown to Christmas (never mind that we're Buddhist). Someone smarter than me observed that Christmas is a holiday by women and for women. (Of course, we're talking about the secular holiday as celebrated in these whacked 50 states.) Truer words have never been spoken.

The wisdom I take away from this observation? Take it easy.

Don't invite 40 people to brunch (oh, but we had fun - didn't we?). Don't hand-make the gift wrap (did it). Don't build a gingerbread house more beautifully fitted out than your own home (also guilty). Hell, don't even bake.

Take it easy. Play Christmas carols every day. Eat chocolate. Really listen to the people you love. The rest will take care of itself.

This holiday month I wish you peace (and quiet).