Today we slept late, recovering from the Christmas party. I got up a time or two to read the paper, eat raisin bran and go on-line. But I found myself near the noon hour in bed, watching the old Alastair Sim version of A Christmas Carol. It made me want to read the book again.
We got our Christmas tree today. The folks at the local Home Depot always sell their trees for a fraction of what the local tree lots and grocery stores charge. I always want to get the least expensive tree--the Scotch Pine--but the Scotch Pines are always picked over by the time we are ready to set up our tree. We settled on a Douglas fir, paid some twenty two dollars for the privilege of having it, and loaded it into our trunk.
The ghost of Christmas past reminded me of exasperating afternoons in which I never seem to get the tree set in the stand just right, to the frustration of all. But this year it went into the little plastic stand like clockwork. Our trees never come out straight, quite, but we have learned to compromise.
We put the lights up tonight, but we have not yet begun hanging the ornaments. We'll do a bit tonight, a bit tomorrow night, and a bit the rest of the week. Our little lhasa dogs like the aromatic tree when it is first put up, but it becomes old hat to them in short order. Maybe I'll take them for a night-time walk tonight. This never becomes old hat for them.
I like that idea of treating every day as a time of giving.
