It's Christmas Time!

Hubs and I have differing views on how Christmas should be celebrated or, as Hubs would be more apt to say, endured. He enjoys the food and drink involved in the holiday season - who doesn't? - but detests carols, Christmas trees, decorations, crowds and shopping.

I, however, love all of it. Or most of it, anyway. When I was little I used to clandestinely listen to my mom's collection of Christmas albums in the Summer, and I would drag which ever parent I happened to be with to our local tree farm the day after Thanksgiving. My dad always got a smallish tree but my mom, flush with her lifelong accumulation of ornaments, always got a respectably sized 6 or 7 footer. We'd listen to Frank Sinatra and decorate the tree, complete with lights that were the size and shape of chicken eggs. As presents appeared under the tree I found myself constantly rearranging them and, as I had them pulled out from under the tree for my inspection, I'd wriggle under the tree and look up through the branches and admire the pattern the lights made through the pine needles.

Luckily for Hubs I'm not still as enthusiastic about Christmas and trees and decorating, but I do still really, really like my inner adolescent getting a nod at Christmas time. That said, we live in a small townhouse. It's bigger than anywhere Hubs and I have previously lived, but it's still pretty cramped. So cramped that getting a tree reminiscent of the ones from my childhood isn't entirely practical. There was one Christmas early in mine and Hubs' relationship when we lived across the street from a tree lot in San Francisco and I saw it as a sign that we needed a tree but even with a small tree we blocked off half our futon and couldn't see the TV.

For the last several years we had this little tree that I bough in Vancouver.

It was probably meant to sit on an entry table or the back of a toilet, but we quite liked it. It didn't do well with the move back to Cali, but we still brought it out the last 2 Christmases. Alas, its sparkly black balls have nearly all fallen off and its branches have been bent one too many times, so I acquiesced to Hubs demands that it go live in the garage.

And with that, I'd like to introduce our petite, environmentally friendly, cat barf-inducing, Hubs acceptable, Christmas tree.

Now it's on to baking, wrapping and consoling myself that it's only a matter of years before The Boy demands a bigger tree.