Today was the twelfth day of Christmas. Did you celebrate with drums, swans, and milk? No, me neither. But I will mark the occasion by noting three beautiful, holiday-related things from the week past:

1. Our Christmas tree had shed nearly all its needles and was starting in on the ornaments when we took it down on Monday night. I stayed up late to box up and inventory the ornaments and noticed that a soldier was missing his rapier. The next morning I asked Rudi to keep an eye out for it and a few minutes after leaving for work he was back with a tiny, pink, plastic sword, having sifted through the heap of dead needles out in the tree box. I know the soldier will be grateful that he was not removed from duty permanently.

2. Rudi and I have spent much of the last week catching up on our Christmas movie watching, which was a bit sparse before the holidays. We’ve seen It’s a Wonderful Life and Christmas in Connecticut and The Shop around the Corner (which neither of us had seen before) and Cosmic Christmas (a CBC production I hadn’t seen for 30 years), all of which fill my heart with joy. But I wanted Rudi to get to see something he wanted, too, so I suggested he put on A Christmas Story, which I only had seen once and which I hadn’t liked at all. I’m happy to report that, as with last year’s viewing of Nightmare before Christmas, my opinion has been revised and I now can appreciate the sentiment of the story.

3. We begin the year as we mean to go on — at midnight, we were out on a movie date that we followed by a walk home as fireworks went off (yes, literally!). And then our first dinner of 2011 was with friends: Susan and Phillip invited John, Kathie, Rudi, and me to join the two of them and their new baby Holden for a delicious supper.

How about you? What has been beautiful in your world during these last seven days of Christmas?