Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Jasen sent a Christmas card saying how much he values everything I do for the team and a gift for the kittens.

2. Sunday afternoon, I run across town in a desperate bid to finish my Christmas list. I am delighted to discover that Sarah, who’d been ill, is up and doing one final shift at her old job to help them out with the rush. She helps me with my shopping, and since she won’t be back in time to join us for our New Year’s Eve tradition this year, it feels particularly good to see her one last time in 2024.

3. Christmas was lovely, with a slow start to the day after Mum & I were up late wrapping. I think everyone liked their presents, the dinner was delicious, and we finished the night with The Bishop’s Wife, most of which Mum & I dozed through.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Oops. Karen texted to ask me why I hadn’t posted this week, and I thought, “But I did!” But that was last week. Not this week. Ahem. I feel like I’m a little young to be claiming such forgetfulness, but I’m going to do it anyway.

Here, slightly belatedly, are three beautiful things from last week:

1. Our tree trimming was last weekend, and it was a fun event. We had folks from our earliest political days in D.C. (and their teenaged children!!!) and bikey friends and volleyball friends, and while everyone important to us here couldn’t make it (and thank goodness, because we most certainly would not have had room for them all), it felt like a nice balance of the people who make this home. (The photo shows the crew who stayed until the end of the night, with thanks to John for thinking to take a picture.)

2. While Rebecca gamely produced a steady stream of nearly all our ornaments to get them on the tree in record time during the party, I always pull aside a bag that contains the ones Rudi likes best so he can add them himself afterwards. He tucked them onto the tree during the week and then whisked the Christmas box back to our storage unit so it wasn’t cluttering up the living room.

3. While last season it took until the very end of the season to drop a set, this season the team lost our opening game in the second week. And then we were down in the second set, too. But we kept our cool and kept talking and won the second set and then dominated the tie-breaker, which felt extraordinarily good.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Friends, we’ve made it. Done or not, we have reached the night before Christmas.

Thank you for coming along with us all these past 24 days. Thanks to Rudi, Marg, and raidergirl3 for their posts along the way.

Rudi and I drove north last night, which gave us a chance to listen to WXPN’s Robert Drake in his The Night Before The Night Before. We got the pre-show, but if you tune in to WXPN from Philadelphia anytime today, you’ll catch Drake’s main holiday show.

Another Christmas Eve tradition of mine is to watch Christmas Eve on Sesame Street:

If you don’t have time for the live broadcast, nor an hour for Jim Henson, may I offer Stan Rogers’ “At Last I’m Ready for Christmas,” which is far shorter:

If you celebrate, Merry Christmas. And if you don’t, peace on earth to us all.

Hey, folks!

Earlier this week, Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader posted about her most recent Christmas reads and invited me to share it on the Virtual Advent Tour. In response to her post, I thought I’d note down the holiday reads I’m either in the midst of or hoping to get to this season (through mid-January when our tree comes down):

Finished:

• A Holly Jolly Diwali, by Sonya Lalli, starts just before Diwali in the fall and carries through until Christmas (with a postlude set at the following Diwali), so I’m counting it. If you want an international romance, much of which takes place in India, and a multicultural approach to holidays, I encourage you to check it out.

Underway, but early days:

• The Mistletoe Motive by Chloe Liese is about rival booksellers, Gabriella di Natale and Jonathan Frost, at an indie shop that is threatened by a national chain, Potters. I’m early in, but expect lots of festive wordplay and allusions to favorite holiday books and movies.
• A Winter in New York by Josie Silver focuses on a young British woman who’s moved to New York after the end of a bad relationship and still reeling from her mother’s death. Then she finds out that her mother’s beloved and secret gelato recipe may have come from a city shop.

Still to come (let me know if I should prioritize any of these):

• Just Like Magic by Sarah Hogle
• A Merry Little Meet Cute by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone
• The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett
• Christmas at The Mysterious Bookshop, edited by Otto Penzler
• The Christmas Orphans Club by Becca Freeman
• Mrs. Jeffries and the Midwinter Murders by Emily Brightwell
• The Christmas Café by Eliza Evans
• The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore (my BFF gave me this years ago and I can remember reading the start of it on the metro and cannot tell you why I didn’t finish it. I’m assuming life and figure if ever there was a year to read a Christmas satire, 2023 is it.)

Today is the antepenultimate day of the Virtual Advent Tour for the year. To celebrate, we head back to The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader, where Marg has a post sharing the decorations she and her husband have added to their collection this year.

If you work a traditional job, good luck with the last day before the holiday!

Welcome to winter, my friends. As tonight marks the solstice, that makes today the shortest day, a perfect time to read this poem from Susan Cooper, the author of The Dark Is Rising series.

The Shortest Day
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp~Copyright Susan Cooper

So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
The lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen,
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us — listen!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land.
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends, and hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year, and every year.
Welcome Yule!

Be safe and loved and rejoice in this shortest day and this longest night, for tomorrow we begin again our journey toward sunlight and warmth.