christmas time is here

i love this movie and this song and charlie brown. i relate to the guy. and we have similar taste in christmas trees. here's ours this year:

nice and skimpy, just the way i like it. when the fam went south to hunt christmas trees this year, laine kept picking these fat old trees, the kind where you can't even see the trunk, and i told her we had to choose a tree that looked homeless. she responded, "they're all homeless catherine." she is a very smart six-year old.
i've been a little obsessed with the tree this year--enchanted, rather. jane put the lights on (the hard part) while i whined to her, but i did the ornaments all by my lonesome, late at night.


the ornaments must go on one at a time, and slowly, so that each story has a moment of life in my memory. there's the starfish santa from friends in california, the hot pepper santa from friends in houston, the sourdough santa from friends thirty years ago. there are the blown glass balls from our trip to venice, the angel from our neighbor angels, and the star the star the star.

time under the christmas tree is sacred. it means everything to me that is beautiful about the holiday: family. history. light. sacrifice. tradition. gifts. belief.

you may be thinking this post is a little late, but in my house, in my heart, christmas can't sneak away so easily.