Sing it with me now: “It’s the most wonderful tiiiiime of the yeeeeear.”

Christmas season is upon us, which means it’s time for my yearly reminder to myself that I’m not a big fan of my cheap fake tree and its one strand of lights — both situations that I’ve meant to change and never do.

My main issue with the fake tree is that each time I have to assemble it and manually spread out each and every one of the little “branches.”  The final product is okay…in the dark:

I like to take the spirit of “it’s the thought that counts” and focus on the overall experience.  I do love that we have the tree plugged into an outlet that’s attached to a light switch so that we can turn it on with ease.  The pine-scented candle nearby somewhat makes up for the lack of natural Christmas tree aroma.

And then there are the ornaments, which I feel have a nice personal flavor.  Plenty of people have stars or angels on top of their trees, but who else has a mitten?

I received this mitten as a gift from a coworker when I was in Florida.  There was a Starbucks gift card inside, which was both a really unexpected and appreciated gesture and also the impetus for my first ever Starbucks trip.

The newest piece was inspired by this blog post about brightly colored shoes.  My sister-in-law read it and grabbed this guy for me:

There’s also the ridiculous.  And by that I mean ridiculously awesome.  It doesn’t glow in the dark anymore, but I appreciate the joy from an ornament that came out of a Golden Crisp box:

 On the other end of the spectrum is the sentimental.  I have a handful of ornaments from my grandmother’s tree, including this classy piece:

The rest of the living has some Christmas cheer as well.  On the mantle, in addition to a stocking, there’s a dog with appropriate headwear:

No Christmas would be complete of course without this, which needs absolutely no explanation unless you’re a terrible person:

Christmas is the final holiday of the year, and I like to make sure that we keep an eye toward what is next.  That, of course, is the new year, and what better way to celebrate that than with a piece of Taco Bell memorabilia?

When you squeeze him, he says, “Happy New Year, amigos!”

We’ll get there soon enough.  For now, Merry soon-to-be-Christmas, amigos!

Rudolph, the reindeer with the red nose, has been around in song form since 1949, but after more than 60 years it’s time to re-examine the way we look at him.

Gene Autry recorded that first version, beginning the song with the familiar: “You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen.  But do you recall the most famous reindeer of all?”

The accepted interpretation is that he’s asking, “Do you remember this Rudolph guy?”  Until last night, I saw it that way too.  That is, until a friend of mine complained that this is a ridiculous notion.  If we know the lesser reindeer by name, why wouldn’t we remember the most famous one?

My answer:  we’ve been looking at the song all wrong.  He’s not asking if we remember Rudolph, but rather if we want to end his reign of reindeer leadership through a recall election.  I may have spent too long thinking about this, but stay with me.

Consider the structure of the Santa/reindeer team.  We have Santa, the unquestioned North Pole authority who plays a vital role in all of Christmas.  The reindeer, while not directly in charge, are necessary to guide the sleigh to houses all over the world.  At any point, they could go on strike and Christmas doesn’t happen.

What we have is a system of divided government with an executive who needs the support of the legislature.  Santa can use his veto power to boss around the reindeer, but Rudolph and crew can just as easily shut down any of Santa’s proposals.

The singer in this song obviously supports Santa and derides the reindeer as a know-nothing group that blindly follows its incompetent leader.  He wants to throw all of them out, but especially the overhyped one with the red nose.

“All of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names.  They never let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games.”

Here he acknowledges that at one point even the other reindeer didn’t take Rudolph seriously.  Sure, he was on a few committees, but minor ones like the Sawdust Committee.  They never let him do anything that mattered.

Then there was a “foggy Christmas Eve,” a day in which a Santa/reindeer rift threatened everything.  Santa cashes in all of his political chips and gets a shakeup in reindeer leadership.  He gets Rudolph appointed as their leader.  All of a sudden, the reindeer throw out all of their previous thoughts about Rudolph, everything they knew about this hopeless sad sack with antlers, and pretend he’s the greatest thing that ever happened.

“They shouted out with glee, ‘Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, you’ll go down in history!!!!!'”

The singer’s words are soaked in a syrupy glaze of sarcasm.  Everyone agrees this Rudolph guy is a loser, but now that he’s the leader, you’re all going to just pretend he’s the greatest thing that’s ever hit the North Pole?

The other reindeer have long been a joke — “You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen…”

But the biggest threat to Christmas is clearly Rudolph.  So, do you recall the most famous reindeer of all?

My Christmas gift to you all — a picture of the National Christmas Tree!!

Everyone can relax now, our house is officially ready for Christmas.

Tonight my second roommate inquired about whether I was going to put up my tree, so I made the massive effort to make that happen.  Actually, it took about 10 minutes, but let’s pretend I put a lot into it.

Part of me really hates this tree because it’s fake and doesn’t have that Christmas tree smell.  The other part of me enjoys how easy it is to set up and later put away.  I also kind of like its humbleness.

I got it when I was living down in Florida making less money at a TV news job than I did selling shoes at the mall.  To put things in perspective, the snack I would bring to work most days was rice with a few pieces of frozen vegetables mixed in, and my diet relied heavily on hot dogs that came 10 for a dollar.  So when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to go home for the holidays and decided I needed at least something Christmasy to cheer me up, I went to Target and got the cheapest tree they had.  I think it cost me roughly $14.

Of course things are better now, and while I could go in a new direction, there’s something to be said for the memories of this one and its single strand of lights:

Yes, I could have framed this picture better, but that would have required getting up out of the chair

The real question will be how long we leave it up this year.  Last time it stayed around until at least February.

Enjoy the season.

If you walked into my house right now, you might make fun of the fact that it is February 3 and we still have a Christmas tree up.

I could tell you that I’m lazy and just haven’t gotten around to taking it down. I could also make the case that it is strategically located in front of a curtain-free window, providing much-needed sun-blocking services:

But really, none of those things would be true. The real problem is that you have never heard of a Super Bowl tree:

Now, I know what you’re thinking — what happens after the Super Bowl ends on Sunday? Well clearly you’ve never heard of a Valentine’s Day tree:

And I can even guess the next thing you’re thinking — so, what, a St. Patrick’s Day tree after that? No. Don’t be ridiculous.

If you happened to witness our Christmas Day 2004 festivities, my family could use your help.

We apparently have a good idea of what happened at all of the other Christmases since 2002, but for some reason that year is a blur. At least, when it comes to the bunny suit.

Inspired by “A Christmas Story” I gave my younger brother a bunny suit as part of his 2002 gift. It’s not as awesome as it sounds. Given the incredible prices of adult-size bunny suits at the time, I went with a roughly $4 infant-size suit I got on eBay.

The first recipient, circa 2002

Since then the bunny suit has made the rounds, ending up in the hands of just about everyone in the family. This year we decided we should make an official record, and that’s where the amnesia set in.

Everyone insists they’ve only had it a certain number of times, and that leaves a year missing. Putting together other bits of information — like knowing to whom we gave it or who gave it to us — has filled in most of the years.

But 2004 is a complete mystery.

Not a mystery are two of the more interesting holiday songs in existence. One has to do with hippos and rhinocerosesses. The other, with an Italian donkey.

I also should mention that my roommate and I have official parental support for our Nerf gun activities. His parents presented us with two more guns for our collection, this time with suction darts. Get excited.