Fat man in the red suit

We have a wonderful collection of Christmas books; we spend the entire month of December reading them at bedtime. There are the classics, the books received as gifts, the ones carefully chosen from the bookstore. Then there are the little gems picked up from yard sales, from used book sales, that we especially treasure. The Mole Family's Christmas, by Russell and Lillian Hoban, is one such gem. You can get it used from Amazon for as little as 50 cents, apparently, and if you were going to add one book to your collection (or start one) this year, this would be my recommendation.

Dean and I are both suffering from nasty colds at the moment, so it's a relief that we've already done everything "out in the world" that we needed to do this weekend and can just be at home today. Just two more boxes of decorations to bring up from the basement. A mountain (really, a mountain) of laundry to fold, a bathroom to clean, some serious dusting and vacuuming to do, but we'll get there. Next weekend we have a lot more going on -- relatives to visit, the candlelight carol service to attend, a stroll through Boston's North End for some Italian Christmas treats -- so our plan is to be healthy and caught up by then. At Christmas time I miss Chicago for so many reasons; first, of course, simply because it was 'home' and the place of all my childhood Christmases, but then for the Swedish shops in Andersonville and all the German restaurants and bakeries where my own family's heritage is connected. There was never much of a German presence in Boston, so we're without Bavarian gemutlichkeit and I feel its absence.