It's Beginning to Look A lot Like...

Christmas!

Our little noble fir is all a-twinkle and we are hanging ornaments

and planning the Christmas dinner menu for three (or four, to be precise).

I think getting this little tree has made all the difference in the world to us - we were both feeling so blue until the living room smelled green and fresh,

until the lights were twinkling.

Somehow the house got cozier and our hearts grew three sizes.

Now we're actually excited for the day to come!

We'll Skype with our families and

welcome new traditions

all in the comfort of our little bungalow.

.

.

No Christmas would be complete

without this

hunk:

Santa of Minneapolis,

the very first unfortunate creature we rescued from the second hand store

whose Christmas offerings thrill and delight our funny bones every Thanksgiving:

I don't even know when it began...was it four years ago already?

My sister and I went in to look at clothes and found this incredible wealth

of second-hand Christmas ephemera

mostly beat to hell

and funnier than a good slapstick routine!

The original santa (with his cat penis hat and rapidly deteriorating beard)

has his own vocal inflections and always asks if you've been a very good girl or boy

when engaging a person in conversation.

He's very witty and prone to dispensing advice, even though he is the first to admit he has no mouth.

We think his misshapen little trunk to be filled with beans or rice

because it does not bounce like a bowl full of jelly when he laughs: the paint is too thick.

He cannot be held upright without assistance,

even though his creator gave him one single flat....foot(?) on which to stand.

I am particularly partial to his nose

and his humility.

Our favorite from this year's trip was a styrafoam santa head with the face of John C. Reilly

and a beard of sparse, uneven and billowy polyester fibers.

His foam brain was exposed by the ragged cut of the plastic skin, leading us to believe that at one point he had been whole.

They were asking 1.99 for him, I believe, and we held our bellies in mirthful

disbelief that someone might invest in his ravaged charm.

Sinister and merry, this

creature was too big (and too far gone) to make the cut,

so we opted to take home a wee drunken sunburned surprised santa

whom I will introduce you to tomorrow

Along with haunted woodland santa

and a few other unfortunate souls we had to leave

at Ark.

Do you have any poor unfortunate souls that celebrate the holidays with you, loved to bursting

or uneven on their little gastropods?

Do share!!

xo

Sunny