Before ~ After

After three Christmases over the last five days, it's safe to say we're all pretty much holidayed out. We were all resoundingly spoiled, and have enough chocolate, games, puzzles, legos, and new music to last well into the new year. The boys are relishing their second week of vacation--with hopes for lots of time to do exactly what they want to do, in between the trips to friends' houses, movies, and New Year's parties.

We're not too tired of Christmas, however, to carry out our Twelve Days of Christmas rituals--reading a page each night from My Wonderful Christmas Tree, adding an animal to our own wonderful tree "calendar," lighting candles on a birthday ring (12 on Christmas day; each subsequent day we remove a candle and replace it with a tree), and singing a different carol every night as the candles burn.

We once had a landlord who sawed all the branches off his Christmas tree and stuffed the whole thing in the fireplace the day after Christmas (we could see the poor de-branched tree through the bay window). I prefer holding on to the tree and a little bit of Christmas--the quiet, pleasant, noncommercial bits--for a while longer.