Last year, we had just gotten married when Christmas came around, and we were over in Prague, enjoying the goofy language and the lights and the old city. It was amazing, and I wouldn't trade it away for anything, but it sort of feels like it's been two years since we've had a legitimate Christmas with family and a christmas tree and presents and maybe a candlelight service. All of those things. We're doing our best to make up for it this year, though. We have a steady stream of Christmas songs going and several Christmas movies lined in the Netflix queue (Next up is the Grinch. We've watched White Christmas and A Charlie Brown Christmas so far.) We have cookie plans and wish lists and shopping goals, and we even have a paper chain that we've been tending to each day. But up until yesterday, we still didn't have a tree!
Last night was the night for it, though. Kirsten got a tip about trees at Rite Aid (seriously), so we went to look, but they weren't selling them. They did have good deals on lights, though, so we picked those up there, and then the next place we thought to check was Home Depot. They had several kinds of trees and good prices (Noble Fir: $40. Douglas Fir: $20. Knowing what the heck the difference is between the two: Priceless.), and we had an awesome tree within about ten minutes. The guy doing the wrapping and the cutting off of the bottom inch of trunk was the nicest guy ever, too. He seemed like he's a retired guy with a few young grandchildren that are his favorite part of his life, and he volunteers a month of his time each year to come and wish everyone the most gently warm "Merry Christmas" they'll hear all winter as they buy their trees. I wanted to hug him.
We didn't have anything to tie the tree to the top of the car, so we put it in the trunk instead. Surprisingly, it fit pretty well. And we only live a half mile away, so we weren't afraid of anything crazy happening.
I screwed it into the tree stand Kirsten had gotten earlier in the day, and she said it looked like I got smashed by the tree. I agree. Smashed and eaten.
A few ornaments later... 
...and we were ready for the topper, which we went and picked out at Target.
Even though this could easily be a music blog, it isn't. But I do have to make one suggestion: use Pandora. For those of you unfamiliar, it's pretty simple. You put in one song you like, and the folks who run Pandora serve up a bunch of music you'll probably enjoy as much. They use a huge database of hundreds of musical characteristics of each song to make it work. If you like a song, you can hit the thumbs-up button, and if you don't, you hit the thumbs-down, and it'll skip to a new song. You don't have to hit either button -you can just let it play- but if you do, it'll get more and more zeroed in on what you're likely to enjoy. It's pretty cool. Anyway, the reason I suggest it is that the creators were small enough to make "Christmas songs" one of the categories in their database, so you can enter "Jingle Bells" as your starting track, and *boom!* instant Christmas radio station with better variety than the mall. Try it out.
Whatever you do to get your Christmas on, make sure to really embrace it. Turn the music up! Decorate a stocking! Enjoy yourself, eat some unhealthy holiday things, smile at people... If it snows where you are, invite a stranger to take a few minutes to have a snowball fight (this happened to us recently at a bus stop and totally made our day) or build a snowman. Watch Charlie Brown (and then aspire to name your firstborn Linus). And slow down. Look around you, and enjoy it all. Get into it.
I'll be back later with more Christmasy things and leave you now with the illumination of our very first tree.
Kent
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