I meant to write a special Christmas edition of Three Beautiful Things, but instead took the holidays off. So I offer this to you today, intead:

1. Mum spent the holidays running around dusting off various surfaces again and again in the aftermath of a construction project that sent swirls of dust blowing through her house. But Christmas night, her hutch was covered once again with a fine layer of dust. But this time it was glittery dust blown down from the silver Christmas tree in front of the mirror.

2. A few Christmas cards did not find their way to the Burrow this year: one because my cousins didn’t have my address and two because the post office did not want to recognize “The Burrow” as an official address. But the cards found us instead at Turkey Ridge before we left to head home again. So we got the good fortune to have cards delivered to us at two locations!

3. The route we take through New Jersey on our drive from the Burrow to Turkey Ridge takes us through a number of neighborhoods, particularly around Newark. In bad years, the people in these neighborhoods do the holiday justice with their Christmas lights. But in good years (as I thought this one was for light displays), they went above and beyond. For a state that the rest of the Northeast ridicules for its ugliness ( and let’s face it, the area around the Turnpike is), New Jersey sure knows how to do Christmas decorations up right. Rudi and I point them out to each other: “Look! Christmas!”