This post probably isn't going to be of much interest except possibly to extended family members who wonder what we've been up to...not a whole lot. We didn't have a tree, or much wrapping, because we celebrated xmas out of town last year. The year before that we just moved. This year, however, I was organized enough, and enthusiastic enough about the holiday, to actually make an effort to wrap.

To my mind, decorating giftwrap is (I suspect) second only to making the gifts for being the most enjoyable part of the winter holidays. When I first moved out, I had a lot more stamina for Christmas, and the typical program consisted not only of buying, possibly making, and wrapping gifts, going out for a fresh-cut tree and decorating it, but making and calligraphing cards, attending Midnight Mass, a Christmas walk, (our private celebration) breakfast and gift opening at one household, followed by gift-opening and 1pm dinner at the other household, and back to the first household for evening turkey again as well.

It was exhausting.

But the households have switched to an every-other-year program with alternating Thanksgiving and Christmas for each, and alas, my sister-in-law no longer conducts at one of the lovely old Detroit area churches, and I haven't sent out cards for 3 years now. —That tradition I would like to revive, and the f2 generation, bless their hearts, did a bang up job of decorating the tree this year. We even managed to make a few cookies.

And, of course, I took a lot of holiday-related pictures.

File started 26dec05, and (more or less) completed 7jan07. (Whew.) I still didn't manage to send out cards for 06, but we had a cookie decorating party (no photographs, sorry) with all the cousins, who along with f2tY once again hung tassels from a great many unlikely places; and I made a whole lotta stockings for the event.

And here it is well past the end of the season, and I though I did finally manage the rest of the gift-decorating posts, alas, the ornament decorating ones, along with the new stockings, will just have to wait till next year. Some of those ornaments still need to be photographed, really, and some others re-photographed, but though I normally like to leave the tree up until Epiphany, this year I think I started taking it down on the 26th. And completely finished the job by the 6th. But you were sick of this stuff anyway, right?

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Sylvus Tarn