"What are you talking about, Andrea?"

Dec. 1 is the day I officially allow myself to start going Christmas Crazy. What, you thought it was bad before? Ha! A ha ha ha ha ha ha! HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! No. That was me being restrained. Just wait.

You know what is really amusing me right now: All of the Holiday Bloggers are showing up, doubtless hoping that the Big Draw was posted early, and leaving comments. Hello! I'm not even going to tell you when it's going up; that way you'll keep coming back to check. Hee hee.

Anyway, back to the Christmas Craziness:

I have so much left to do, and only twenty-four days to do it in!

See?

And in those 24 days, I have to:

1. Make cards.

2. Decorate gift bags.

3. Wrap presents.

4. Put up tree (this Saturday!)

5. Put up other decorations, including lights, stocking hangers and holiday knickknacks.

6. Keep holiday plants from dying until Jan 1.

7. Bake. Scottish shortbread (brown sugar), sugar cookies (decorated, of course), gingerbread, holiday blossoms, cheesecake brownie bars, super-easy chocolate bar cookies (the actual name, and it doesn't lie), peanut butter balls, truffles, and gingersnaps. And this is the minimum--the "it won't be christmas to me if I don't bake this" list. This must be done relatively soon because # 11 depends to some extent on this item.

8. Plan holiday dinner.

9. Finish new christmas decorations--the ones I am making.

10. Put together gift for Secret Spoilee.

11. Package and ship all gifts that have a final destination outside of my normal environs.

12. Order Frances's big gift from Toys R Us online, since they don't have it in the store and who wants to go to the store this time of year anyway?

13. Attend a birthday party this weekend.

14. Attend a party on the 18th.

15. Plan and execute Frances's second birthday party. She turns two in three weeks.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Whew. I think I blacked out there. Where was I? Oh, yes, my baby is growing up. I'll pretend she is turning one so that I can return to my list.

16. Make Daisy Bread, a lovely, sweet, fairly complicated sweet bread with yeast and everything, which is my family's traditional Christmas morning breakfast.

17. Do any remaining Christmas shopping. Thank goodness I'm almost done, but my Mom's b/day is the 31st and I don't have anything for that yet.

18. Teach Frances how to sing basic holiday songs, and watch movies together.

19. Take a minimum of 500 photographs of Frances in every conceivable pose around anything remotely connected to christmas--fireplace, tree, presents, stocking, snow, snowpeople, dancing to holiday music, "helping" with baking, and so on.

20. Read a Christmas Carol, which I do every year on Christmas Eve. Set out cookies and eggnog for Santa, and try to come up with a plausible explanation for how he would get through the direct vent of the natural gas fireplace.

21. Do the Big Draw for the Winter Holiday of Your Choice Blog Extravaganza Gift Exchange ... tonight!

~~~~~

I can hardly wait. I'm so excited. Christmas growing up in my family was rarely peaceful--my Dad and I had an annual fight Christmas afternoon without fail, and usually a bad one; and some of my relatives passed away near the day--but somehow it never extinguished the specialness of Christmas for me.

I feel very lucky for this. I get to spend at least one month, and up to three, every year, giddy and happy and excited. And it has nothing to do with the presents, at least, not the ones for me--Erik and I just get each other stocking stuffers and usually implement a spending maximum to prevent a Gift Arms Race (which happened the first few years). Buying gifts for other people is fun, but I typically don't spend a lot--I honestly prefer to make them, as crazy as that probably seems. It takes a lot of time and a bit of effort, but it's fun for me. Honestly the gift-making and card-making and baking is most of the holiday fun for me. If you plop me on the couch with a bit of holiday embroidery in hand, a holiday song on the stereo or a holiday show on tv, some holiday baking in the oven, and a little person tearing around a christmas tree with all the lights on and the fireplace blazing--neither a million dollars nor any form of success could make me any happier.

It's that good.

I think some of the anti-Christmas/anti-holiday folks think that those of us who really love it are putting on some kind of show and going through a commercial, consumerist ritual that we know is hollow but feel compelled to participate in anyway. I just want to say--it ain't so. You could pass a law forbidding the spending of money from November 15 to December 31 (excepting groceries and necessities) and close down every shopping mall for the last two weeks of the year entirely, and I would have at least as much fun as I do now.