A wise blogger would have remembered the outdated phone she uses as a camera these days when she went out, but tonight I was not that person. So, I’ll show you some of the holiday sights of D.C. another day.

I am absolutely a sucker for commercials that tug at the heartstrings, particularly near the holidays. I mean, I won’t necessarily buy your stuff (or, in fact, stop criticizing your company if you’re on my naughty list), but I’ll at least stop and pay attention to your commercial for 30 seconds.

You’ve probably seen the short version of this commercial from an online retailer. Watch the long version:

Kroger and Coca Cola both had similar thoughts this year:

I haven’t seen even an abridged version of this one from Chevy on tv, but it’s a tearjerker:

U.K. businesses are the best at Christmas commercials. Here are a couple of my favorites from this year.

John Lewis steps it up every year:

I really appreciate when a commercial is just in it for the holiday spirit and has nothing to do with what they actually sell, like this British clothing company:

And I’ll leave you with the National Trust’s Christmas shop for my knitters:

If you’re also a sucker for this kind of commercial, you can see a whole playlist of them from around the world here or just the U.K. ones. I might be inclined to set the playlists running while I was wrapping gifts, as something festive in the background, but not so distracting that I’d get sucked in for long periods of time.

Have you seen any Christmas commercials that you’ve loved so far this year?

Rudi at Random Duck likes to balance my bonhomie-filled belief in the transformative power of Christmas with the power of laughter and parody (although it should be pointed out that the first dvd he picked for this season was The Holiday).

Today, he’s got a series of laugh-out-loud, skewering holiday skits and performances to start off your Thursday.

Thanks, hon!

Happy St. Nicholas Day! I hope you survived Krampusnacht unscathed and that you awoke this morning (or, come home later today) to find your shoes full of goodies.

Today, we get to do some touring! Raidergirl3 at an adventure in reading is the blogger who’s participated most in the Virtual Advent Tour, having joined in its inaugural year, back when Marg and Kailana were running it. That’s how we met, and I joined her on the tour the following December.

Today, she shares some Christmas memories with us, both from her personal life and of her Virtual Advent Tour posts through the years. I hope you check out both.

Welcome back to the fifth day of the Virtual Advent Tour.

Every year, in the first week after Thanksgiving, I head downtown to Macy’s to check out their holiday windows. Some years, they are amazing and other years, they’re … a little less wondrous.

This year falls into the latter category with an apparent tie-in with the Toys-R-Us brand. The toy store giant faded this millennium, ultimately declaring bankruptcy five years ago. However, Christmas is a time for miracles (and capitalism-driven nostalgia) because the brand now operates seasonally out of Macy’s toy sections.

So, if you were at one point or another a Toys-R-Us kid, get you to your local Macy’s for an Instagram opportunity with Geoffrey the Giraffe.

Would you like to share some of the holiday sights near your home? Sign up for a date and the Virtual Advent Tour will make a stop.

Welcome back to the fourth day of the Virtual Advent Tour. Tonight is our annual tree-trimming party, so please enjoy this classic holiday post, first published eight years ago and no less relevant today than in years past (although we are maybe in slightly better shape than usual):

How to Throw a (Christmas) Party

My tree-trimming party is due to start in ten hours. I am exhausted, but the state of the Burrow suggests I ought not to be.

Here’s roughly how we got to where we are:

1. Set the date of the party sufficiently in advance. (Mine has been the second Sunday after Thanksgiving since I started throwing them for my college interns and my friends the year after I graduated college myself. Twenty-six years is considered sufficient.)

2. Invite guests early enough so that can fit your event into a busy holiday season. If you have essentially reserved a date for yourself for more than two decades, this can be slightly closer to the event … such as when repeat guests start asking when the invitation is going to arrive.

3. Begin to clean your home. Depending how often this occurs at other times of the year, it may be necessary to place this higher in your timeline. In my case, I ought to have started the day after my last party.

4. Procrastinate. Allow sufficient time for this. Consider starting a large and detailed and difficult-to-relocate project right in your main party space. You work better under a deadline, after all.

5. Clean some more in a haphazard fashion. Preferably stop one project partway through and leave it behind as if Mr. Clean has been swept through your living space by a hurricane.

6. Take a nap. Make some food. You need to keep up your strength after all.

7. Tackle a small part of the paper you ought to recycle the night before the final recycling is picked up before your party. By small, I mean a handful of envelopes. By night before, I mean 4 a.m.

8. Start to hit a frenzy. Of course you’ll get this all done! There’s plenty of time. By that, I mean two days. Almost.

9. Buy party supplies. In my case, this involves a tree, food, drinks, and paper products. Why does this grocery store not carry half the things you want? Are three bags of chips enough? Where, for the love of all things merry, is the vegan eggnog?!

10. Despair. Is it too late to uninvite all the guests 16 hours before the party is due to start? Or maybe just turn out all the lights and pretend not to be home?

11. Prioritize. A clean bathroom and a clean kitchen are important. People are willing to overlook dust, but they like a clean sink; remember, though, you can still lock yourself in the bathroom to do a spot clean after the first guests arrive.

12. Why have you never noticed all the cat fur and cat litter tracked all over the place? Oh, no, wait. You totally have. You just opted to overlook it.

13. Eat chocolate and drink tea. This will keep your mind off the fact that you have not left yourself enough time to sleep.

14. Stop to write a blog post. Because we all know that helps.

15. Tackle the biggest non-loud projects in the middle of the night. Then you can pretend your tears are from the strain, rather than the knowledge that you will not finish in time.

16. Get some sleep. Two hours is a nice amount for a long day ahead. You wouldn’t want to get groggy.

17. Calculate the time the stores open that sell the things you forgot or couldn’t find. Arrive as they unlock their doors.

18. Give up on prioritizing. Now you are just going to work on moving/hiding/minimizing the mess. Lacking a bedroom door and extensive closet space makes this a challenge.

19. Chuck papers into bags. Make sure you note which bag contains the important/recent papers because inevitably you will need it tomorrow. This stage is not unlike moving apartments, at least for me.

20. Pile everything on your bed.

21. Try to vacuum before your guests arrive. (This will not always happen.)

22. Try to be done cooking before your guests arrive. (This will rarely happen.)

23. Assume that any guest that arrives promptly at the time you’ve said your party begins is interested in helping you clean and cook. Otherwise, why would they be there already?

24. Have an absolutely wonderful time with your guests during your party. These people are your friends and they really don’t care if you forgot to get rid of those cobwebs you just noticed in a dark corner or if they have to eat home-cooked chili out of a chipped bowl … or a (clean) reused takeaway container.

25. After your last guest has left, collapse on your couch and admire your lovely clean party space. Because you’re never going to bed with all that crap on it.

(See you tomorrow sometime on the other side of 24.)

You, too, could share some of your holiday traditions. Sign up for a Virtual Advent Tour slot here.