The Colors of the Seasons

It took me a good while to get to living in a place with four distinct seasons - spring, summer, fall and winter - and a little longer to get to a place where the third of those seasons was absolutely spectacular. That place was not New England, but Northern Utah, where large swaths of the lower ranges of the Wasatch Front turned to one glorious sweep of gold - the mountain aspens, of course.

The mountains were granite grey, their summits a jagged outline against the blue sky . . . and at their feet, in the town that I lived in, there were more aspens and poplar trees also turning gold; their fallen leaves thickly-piled on the ground underneath turned the streets and sidewalks to gold as well - very much like the description of those gigantic mallorn trees in JRR Tolkein's Lothlorien. Beautiful beyond words - but unlike the seasons in Lothlorien, autumn in Northern Utah was as brief as it was spectacular - usually just a couple of weeks before winter stripped the trees bare and a layer of snow covered it all.

Autumn color in San Antonio Texas lasts for much, much longer - in fact, it is still lingering in my neighborhood, where a great many residents planted a great variety of oaks, since it didn't get properly cold enough to begin turning the leaves until a few weeks ago. So, just this very week, it all looks quite appropriately autumnal, which clashes something awful with the Christmas decorations.

I think that the most spectacular trees here are the oaks; not just the evergreen live oaks - which like the ones I recall from growing up in California, they remain a plain dark green cloak of leaves year round. But other original in our neighborhood homeowners had something more exotic than the usual Arizona ash trees when their homes were first established here: they went for ornamental pear trees, crepe myrtles, sycamores, Chinese pistache, ginkos and . . . the other sort of oak.

I walked around with a camera this week - because the trees look so wonderful. They have put out displays of red and red-bronze, or bronze and green, colors that muddle and blend together, or stand out boldly; pale yellow and dark amber, maroon mixed with paler red and yellow, and even one particular tree with a muddle of pale green and yellow leaves still clinging to the branches. As I said - quite wonderful, except that it looks pretty strange with the Christmas ornaments.

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Winterreise 2010

By Julia Hayden

Over the last decade - or perhaps even longer - all of the adventure, the fun and the excitement of traveling by air has been removed with cruel and surgical precision. Slowly, slowly, all of the frivolous extras have been chipped away, or become expensive add-ons. A small bag of peanuts and a cup of juice, enjoyed while sitting elbow to elbow in a tight-packed flying cattle car, and the only thing to look forward to (aside from the whole journey being over) is a long slog through the wide-flung nodes of a hub airport in order to catch a connecting flight at another gate. Which as luck usually has it, is as far from the gate where you were unceremoniously decanted as it can get and not be in another county. Or state.

No, about the only good fortune one can hope for these days is meeting a congenial person, whilst waiting for your flight or during it, and passing the idle hours in interesting conversation. Here I was most fortunate - even with the East Coast being socked in with Donner Party levels of snowfall, and the West Coast being served up with relentless rainstorms - I passed the time traveling home with a succession of no less than three very congenial fellow travelers.

The first of these had been at the San Antonio airport all day, trying to get onto flight to Salt Lake City and very tired of working Sodoku puzzles. There is only one kind of young man under the age of 21 who routinely wear a black business suit, conservative tie and white shirt. LDS missionaries - they hardly need the nametag, at all. Turned out his home was in Windcrest, he was going to the 9-week long LDS missionary training course in Salt Lake City before going to South Florida for his tour of mission duty, because he was fairly fluent in Spanish. Then, he thought he might join the Air Force. I don't think he had ever been to Salt Lake City - and I used to live there.

The hour on the ground - and the two hours in the air to Salt Lake City were enlivened by the guy in the seat next to me; he was going to Park City for the skiing and a better time to do that doesn't exist. He's a native Texan - and it proves that San Antonio really is a small town because he had gone to school with one of my former employers. Turned out that we had some other mutual friends and interests, including one for local history. His grandfather and great-grandfather were cattle ranchers out in West Texas and I had written a book touching on the great days of trailing cattle north to Kansas - heck, I even had a copy of J. Frank Dobie's book about longhorns in my bag.

Because of the delay on the ground, I was pretty sure I'd miss the connecting flight to San Diego ... but they had just begun boarding as I jogged breathlessly along the concourse between gates (note to self: start jogging regularly again). Made the flight with about fifteen minutes to spare; I could have just walked fast, but not keen on spending the night sleeping in the terminal, fond as I am of watching the sun come up over the Wasatch Front. For the fight to San Diego, I shared a row with a young Coast Guard member's wife, who was coming home to San Diego after a flying trip to Fargo, N.D. We had a lot in common, as it turned out: her trip was a last visit to her grandfather, whose health was failing rapidly, mine to be with my family and to sort out matters after my Dad's death. She had three-month old baby son whom se adored - and laughed and laughed when I told the story of how my father had snake-proofed my brother and I. On one of the first dates with her husband, he had proudly brought a rattlesnake that he had killed, and skinned it in her kitchen sink

So, the flight from San Antonio to home in San Diego was passed very agreeably - although Delta did their part, I think the people I met along the way were the main means of making the journey at least a little pleasanter than it could have been.

Beware The Contents Of The Freezer

by Julia Hayden

In a household with a father who is a research biologist and tends to bring work home, and a mother given to adventurous essays into whatever is cheap and plentiful at the co-op, the deep-freeze is liable to contain some very strange things. When I was a teenager living with my parents, my younger brothers, JP and Sander used to win the gross-out contest among their friends just by opening the deep-freezer and unearthing the bag of dead mice. If that didn't do the trick, the golf-ball sized tumor that the vet removed from the cat (and which my father never got around to doing the biopsy on) was the sure-fire guarantee.

Then there was the monkey skull... Dad brought it home and boiled it clean in a saucepan that we were never able to look at in the same light again, along with a pair of chicken drumsticks. He mounted the cleaned skull and crossed chicken bones on a length of wood, and hollowed out a small depression in the wood to make an ashtray for a friend that Dad thought should stop smoking. I never found out if it worked, but the smell of boiled monkey lingered for days.

The bag of mice were from a failed experiment--- again, Dad never got around to doing the autopsies. The muskrat skin came from a fresh roadkill; never got around to curing the skin. He didn't just bring home dead animals, there were live ones, such as the bowl of goldfish that were supposed to expire from the effects of the experiment, but didn't and so came home. Sander had a kangaroo rat named Sylvester and a lovely pink and grey rosy boa, named Rosie. She had to have live food, so she went in once a month to the lab with Dad for a mouse or two, until she escaped her cage on the trip back one day. People sat nervously in that car for years, especially ones who didn't care for snakes. We had a turtle in the backyard, who loved eating dandelions, and for a while, a horse who clomped around, eating kibble from the dogs' dish. On one memorable day, the horse treed the Fuller Brush man, who came in the back gate by accident. No fan of large animals, he never returned.

Mom had a small budget, a large family and an open mind. She was the only Anglo in town who made tamales from scratch, and cooked things like jugged hare, which Sander refused to believe was rabbit: he insisted that there wasn't a bit of hair in it. She and Grandma made grape jelly from the Concord grapes growing on the arbor, which we had in our school lunches every day: I still gag at the sight of a PB&J. Then when she discovered the co-op, which had excellent prices for strange things like beef hearts, and made interesting casseroles of slivered heart and rice. This made Dad invariably sing "Heart- you gotta have heart!" from Damn Yankees every time she dished it up. The incredibly cheap chicken should have been stewed, rather than covered in crumbs and baked, for they tasted like chicken-flavored rubber bands. Only Kiet, the Vietnamese refugee living with us at the time, thought they were edible at all. Through all the weird food, we could tease her by ostentatiously opening the freezer and doing an inventory of the mice, tumor, skull, and other biological specimens before tucking in to dinner. Just to be on the safe side, you see.

After Christmas Sales

We do sales, but we don't do sale-sales . . . that is, our enthusiasm for getting up at the crack of midnight on Black Friday and waiting in the parking lot of a big-box store with a mob of sleepy and cranky other cheapskates to purchase some piece-o-dreck from China is . . . well, let's just say that urge is well under control. But thrift stores, yard sales, craft shows - we are so there. We are especially there after Christmas, when the deals are even better for season-specific things, like wrapping paper, boxes, and relatively imperishable foods. My daughter, the queen of all bargain-shoppers made her list this year and checked it twice; those things she specifically wanted, those things that she would buy if they were marked down sufficiently, and the list of places we would hit - based upon proximity and opening hours . . . and most of all, her budget.

9:30 and we're off: First stop, our friendly neighborhood HEB - the seasonal items aisle for LED lights, for next years' tree. Blondie had her eye on those, ever since she overheard one of the managers talking about how they would be marked down after Christmas. Decided not to buy a couple of strings of the LED icicle lights, as they might not match the icicle lights we have already. Haul: four sets of LED lights.

Stop 2 - World Market, in the same complex where the Alamo Drafthouse is - where Central Park Mall used to be, along the 410 frontage between McCullough and Blanco. Christmas ornaments marked down . . . decided not to, upon mature consideration. Blown glass, and playful cats - not a sustainable situation. Final haul: A glass bead cuff bracelet, in gold and dark blue, and three boxes of crackers; they had a buy one, get two free deal.

Stop 3 - The Container Store, over and across 410; gift wrappings, boxes, containers and stuff - which would have been excellent bargains, but that we already had enough for the next few Christmases. Today, the final haul was mixed; Blondie bought a pair of plastic reels to coil Christmas lights around . . . and I bought a little box to keep a stick of butter in. Glass dishes break, the plastic one we have doesn't fit . . . so on to Stop 4 -

Half Price Books - my personal fave. Found a copy of J. Frank Dobie's The Longhorns, and regretfully passed up a book on historic buildings of Fredericksburg. Blondie bought an illustrated atlas of mythical and semi-mythical creatures ancient and modern. Not only are the books half off, but they have an additional 20% off until the end of the year. Final haul: four books, and a vow to return before the end of the year . . .

Stop 5 - hey, time to break for lunch. Among the enterprises which rose up in the rubble of the Central Park Mall is a sandwich place which piqued Blondie's interest: the Earl of Sandwich. It's a chain, but a relatively short one, it appears. Inside, very nice and comfortable, and the sandwiches pretty good. Just exactly the right size, Blondie says - not to filling, but just enough.

Stop 6 - Catherines', off Rector, in back of the North Star Mall: 80% off certain items of lingerie was the draw. Blondie picked up an ornamented tee shirt and a light jacket - from the sale racks, of course. She is coming down to the end of what she had budgeted for today, so it's just as well there is only one more stop.

Stop 7 - Tuesday Morning, which is one of our perennial favorites for kitchen gadgets, gifts, linens and towels . . . and the reason that we didn't need to load up on Christmas wrap at stop 3. Actually, nothing really sent us . . . so we called it a day and went home.

Sometimes, a bargain shopper has to know their own limitations . . .

The Great Pig War of 1841

The Pig War was not actually an honest-to-pete real shooting war. But it did involve a pair of international powers; the Republic of Texas, and the constitutional monarchy of France. And thereby hangs the story of a neighborhood squabble between a frontier innkeeper and a gentleman-dandy named Jean Pierre Isidore Dubois de Saligny who called himself the Comte de Saligny. He was the charge d'affaires, the representative of France to the Republic of Texas, arriving from a previous assignment the French Legation in Washington D.C. He had been instrumental in recommending that France extend diplomatic recognition to the Republic of Texas, but one might be forgiven for thinking that some kind of 19th Century Peter Principle was at play . . . for Dubois turned out to be terribly undiplomatic.

Perhaps it was just the shock of arriving in the new capitol city of Austin, a ramble of hastily built frame shacks and log cabins scattered along a series of muddy streets along the scenic and wooded shores of the upper Colorado River; a city planned with great hopes and nothing but insane optimism to base them on. Dubois arrived with two French servants, including a chef, a very fine collection of wines, elegant furniture and household goods. Here was a man of culture and refinement, perhaps acclimated to America, but ill-unprepared for the raw crudities of the Texas frontier.

Initially, Dubois took rooms at the only hotel in town, a crude inn of roughly-finished logs owned by Richard Bullock, located at the present intersection of 6th and Capitol. In the days before cattle was king, pork was much more favored; Richard Bullock kept a herd of pigs - pigs which were allowed to roam freely, and eat what they could scavenge, along the muddy streets and in back of the frame buildings and log cabins set up to do the business of the Republic. Undaunted, Dubois, rented a small building nearby to use as an office and residence while a fine new legation was being built. He entertained in fine style - was most especially plagued by Bullock's pigs, which constantly broke through the fence around his garden, and helped themselves to the corn intended for his horses. The pigs even broke into the house, and consumed a quantity of bedclothes and papers.

That was the last straw: Dubois instructed one of his servants to kill any pigs found on the property that he had rented, which was done. Richard Bullock, outraged, demanded payment for his loss, which was indignantly refused on the grounds of diplomatic immunity. The matter escalated when Bullock encountered Dubois' swine-killing servant one day in the street and thrashed him. An official protest was filed, and a hearing ordered by the Texas Secretary of State - but citing international law, Dubois refused to attend or allow his servant to testify. Richard Bullock was freed on bail - and when Dubois complained bitterly to Republic authorities he was told that he could collect his passport and depart at any time.

He left in a huff, and stayed away for a year - never having had the chance to actually live in the elegant residence which he had commissioned to become the official legation; a white frame house on a hill which is presently the only remaining structure from those early days. Richard Bullock became the toast of the town, and his pigs were celebrities, for of course the story got around. The fracas also put an end to a generous loan from France, and plans to bring 8,000 French settlers to settle on Texas lands - as well as a military alliance that would allow stationing of French garrisons in Texas to protect them.

What would Texas have been like, one wonders - if Richard Bullock hadn't let his pigs roam and the French Legate had thought to hire someone to build a better fence?

Happy Holidays

And in this spirit I would like to say, simply, but sincerely

PS: We'd love to hear from you this holiday season and throughout the new year. If you aren't already following us on Twitter or interacting with us on our San Antonio Blog, stay in touch!

Oh, by the way... I'm never too buy for any of your referrals.

Oh, Christmas Tree!

by Julia Hayden

It takes a gift to find yourself on a soggy-wet mountainside on a Sunday afternoon in December in the rain, slipping and sliding in the mud with a tree saw in one hand, and leading a sniffling and sopping-wet toddler with the other.

Yep - I had promised Mom that I would bring the Christmas tree that year; she hadn't bought one as they all looked dry and half-dead already. I was stationed at Mather AFB in Sacramento and heading home on leave the next day. The plan - leave the next morning, with the tree lashed to the roof-rack of the VW squareback that I drove at the time. The Sacramento Bee had a story about a local tree farm that very day. The map with the article made the tree farm look as if it were just a couple of blocks away.

We set out bravely enough; the map opened on the passenger seat, where I could refer to it. Out of the back gate, and presently we were tooling along a pleasant country road in the mild sunshine. On the map it looked as if I would stay on this road until it intersected with another road, one with a couple of wiggles in it... into hills, perhaps? Good - the tree farm was out in the country and easy to find. Soon, empty fields and meadows opened up around us... certainly a Christmas tree farm would be in the country. I'd come to the turn-off, the road with a couple of wiggles in it very soon.

Fifteen minutes... twenty ... half an hour and no intersection. Forty-five minutes; already clear the map was deceptive about the distances. I had gassed up for a long drive the next day - but if I hadn't promised I would bring a fresh-cut Christmas tree, I would have given up. An hour went by, and the road began to climb. We were nearly to the foothills, where the clouds piled up against the Sierra Nevada.

At last- an intersection! I slowed down to verify. Yes, the right road. Pretty soon, it climbed farther and higher into the hills, into the cloud layer. I ran the wipers, hoping that the distance along this new road was not as deceptively mapped. I had not counted on two hours there and back. This had better be worth it.

At last - a sign for the farm and a dirt road leading up into the trees, just as it began to drizzle. I pulled into a parking lot; a couple of cars haphazardly stopped in a mown field around a plain red-painted shed. The door was open, there were people - but not as many as there were cars.

"Here, "said a teenaged girl at the cashbox. She handed me a tree saw, and a mimeographed sheet with sketches of the various trees with attention to their needles, and a list of prices- so many dollars per foot per kind of tree. "Cut down the one you want, bring it back here and we'll figure the price." I took the saw, stuffed the sheet in my shoulder bag. "Where are the trees?" She pointed out the door, where the dirt road continued up to the top of the hill. "Up there. They're all over. Just find one you like."

My daughter began to lag, halfway up the hill. I looped the tree saw over my arm, and picked her up. The ground was very wet, sloppy mud and slippery grass. We had coats, but my tennis shoes were soon saturated. Coming down the slope on the far side, I skidded and sat down heavily. Great - now we were both and muddy to the waist. The trees were scattered among taller trees and thickets of grass. It began to rain. I put my daughter down to walk, but she was not happy and quietly began sobbing.

We would have to find a tree, soon... close enough that I could drag it... and the saw... and my poor daughter back to the shed. Unfortunately, they were either too large, or the expensive kind. Finally - a cheaper tree, with long graceful bunches of needles. It sat on a slope, just a little taller than me. I sat my daughter down, and put my purse in her lap- "Here, watch this, for Mummy." I picked a place on the tree's trunk, about four inches above the ground, put the saw to it and went to work. Mercifully, it only took a few minutes. Then I slung my purse and the saw over my arms, picked up the tree and my daughter, and began the long, unhappy, sodden forced-march up over the top of the hill and down towards the sales hut. Some experience - wet, pissed-off, on a soggy mountainside with a lopsided Christmas tree, a wet and wailing toddler, an hour-plus drive, and a longer one in the morning... oh, Christmas tree!

When we got home, I set the trunk of bucket of water; the next day lashing it to the luggage rack for the drive south, though that may not have made much difference.

"It's so fresh!" Mom said, rapturously. "It smells marvelous! Never mind about the flat place, we'll put that against the wall, and no one will ever know... really, I wonder how long it's been since the ones in the lot have been cut! I really wonder about that, now." "You probably don't really want to know, "I said. "Merry Christmas... and you owe me $10." "Is that all?" Mom said.

"Oh, yeah, "I replied. "That's all. Merry Christmas."

Three Kings and Twelve Days of Christmas

Now and again while living overseas, we had a chance to participate in Christmas events as practiced locally: in Greece, Christmas was not much at all, in comparison to Easter - which in the Greek Orthodox tradition is huge: a week of observances, services, a day of feasting, new clothes . . . Compared to that, Christmas in Greece was relatively mind.

Christmas in Spain was a little closer to American tradition - not much, but still a larger part of religious and civic observances: the major department store in downtown Zaragoza, the Corte Ingles had decorated suitably, with Christmas trees and ornaments . . . but Santa did not come on Christmas Eve, bearing presents. Oh, no - In Spain the presents for good boys and girls arrive on Epiphany, the twelfth day of the storied Twelve Days of Christmas. Christmas is actually the first day of Christmas - and in days of yore, the Christmas holidays and feastings went on for the whole twelve days. So, it spreads out the celebrations, rather than cramming it all into one day. And Santa Claus does not deliver the presents: they are brought by the magi, the three wise men or kings; Caspar, Balthazar and Melchior, arrayed in splendid robes, and golden crowns and all the pomp and circumstance than can created by an organization, enterprise or civic municipality.

One of the years when we were stationed at Zaragoza Air Base, there were a number of tickets distributed among the parents of children for a visit by the Three Kings to the Spanish side of the base. At that time, the base was actually divided into two parts with an immensely long runway between: the USAF part, which served to support an air gunnery range, for squadrons stationed in Northern Europe to come down and practice in the better weather, and the Spanish Air Force part, which supported their equivalent of Air Transport/Military Airlift Command, or MATRA. Well, the officers and NCOs at MATRA were going to host a visit by the Three Kings for the dependent children - and American children were invited.

Traditionally, it seems that the Three Kings are to arrive on camels - but the Spanish Air Force went one better: all the children and their parents were lined up on the ramp behind a thin safety barrier, watching for a certain transport aircraft to arrive, engines roaring at a deafening pitch as it rolled up a little way from us. The ramp at the back of the aircraft went down, and out rolled an open jeep, with the Three Kings and their sacks of presents loaded awkwardly in the back. Whenever military Santa arrives - it's on or in the largest and noisiest bit of mechanized inventory available, and MATRA was no exception. The crowd of children and their parents followed the slowly moving jeep towards one of the mess halls on the Spanish side - although the Kings refrained from throwing wrapped candies until the flightline had been left well behind. The potential for foreign object damage, you know: small items getting sucked into jet engines does not make for a nice day.

After that, it was very much the same kind of drill: the children all lined up to get a small present from one of the Kings. My daughter got a jump-rope with wooden handles. And afterwards, there was another treat provided, of churros and chocolate for everyone - fried sweet fritters to dip into chocolate that was really more of a thin chocolate pudding. And it was wonderful - totally rich and indigestible, but wonderful. Just another Christmas tradition.

Gingerbread Houses

My mother was fairly adventurous about food and recipes, back in the day. One of her culinary adventure involved a subscription to the Time-Life series "Foods of the World." While we never really got into experimenting with Moroccan cuisine, the more accessible and familiar varieties got a good work-over.

One of the wild successes from this series was a recipe and patterns for making gingerbread houses, which was came from the volume on the cooking of Germany. We did gingerbread houses for some years thereafter: most as gifts, and very elaborate. It is possible to make the house entirely of gingerbread, and held together with icing only - but the directions must be followed exactly.

Gingerbread for House: Must do three batches, or triple this recipe, if you have a set of ginormous saucepans and batter bowls, and three jellyroll pans. Each single batch will fill one 11 x 17 inch rimmed jellyroll pan. Butter each jellyroll pan with 1 TBsp soft butter and sprinkled with ¼ cup flour, being careful to butter and flour every square inch. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Combine in a large bowl: 6 cups all-purpose flour, 6 TBsp baking powder, 1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tsp ground cloves, ¼ tsp each ground nutmeg and cardamom and 1/8 tsp salt.

In a large saucepan, bring to a boil over high heat: ¾ cup honey, 1 ¾ cup sugar, ¼ cup butter, until butter is melted and sugar dissolved. Remove from heat and mix in 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice and 1 TBsp grated lemon peel. Allow to cool, and add 1 egg, and one egg yolk, and two cups of the flour & spice mixture. When combined, add remainder of the flour mixture, flouring your hands and kneading it, until the dough is smooth, pliable and still slightly sticky. Place lump of dough into the prepared jellyroll pan, and roll it out level, being careful to fill every corner of the pan. Bake for 35 minutes, until cake is firm, and the top is brown.

While the cake(s) are baking, prepare templates for the pieces to be cut, from heavy cardboard, according to the diagrams. The sides of the house are 6 inches long by 4 tall. The end walls are ten inches long at the peak, and 6 inches wide at the base; the sides are cut from a single pan of gingerbread. Two chimney sections are also cut from that pan. The roof pieces are 8 by 10 inches, and there are four corner support posts, each about an inch wide and 4 inches tall, all cut from another single pan. The base for the house is 9 x 11, cut from the last pan, with a large square left over for other uses. As soon as each pan is cool enough to be firm, lay the template pieces down on the cake and cut with a sharp knife. The gingerbread hardens as it cools, so this cutting must be done at once. You may also cut out doors and windows - we used to experiment with "glass windows" made from colored melted sugar poured onto a piece of tinfoil, and attached to the inside of window openings.

For the icing, beat together in a large bowl: 2 egg whites until frothy and slightly thickened. Sift into the egg whites, 2 ½ confectioners sugar, one half-cup at a time, beating thoroughly until combined. This will make a very stiff icing.

The house is assembled as soon as the pieces are hardened. The sides of the house fit inside the end walls, braced by the four support posts. The icing, once applied, will harden enough to be quite strong. The only potential difficulty is the roof, which may have to be braced into place, until the icing hardens enough to hold fast - the pitch being so steep that the roof pieces are apt to slide off.

This produces a gingerbread house as solid as a concrete brick. Go to town, ornamenting with sugar candy, gingersnaps, candy canes, gumdrops and whatever. Enjoy looking at it - because it actually isn't very good-tasting.

Going the Full Griswold

A year or so ago I had to explain the whole concept of ‘the full Griswold' to a friend of advanced years and whose taste in movies tends more toward Turner Classics than National Lampoon; but once introduced to the concept, she agreed how very apt a description it is - and how what once was considered a teensy-weensy over the top Christmas decorations-wise is now almost the standard operating procedure. And what is really, really way over the top now is . . . well, something that usually winds up looking a bit like a busy Christmas-themed carnival and zoo parked on a small suburban front lawn: the inflatable snow-globes and wire-formed reindeer, the lights and garlands, the painted cut-outs, banners and wreaths, sparkly trains and a crèche or two. Oh, what a challenge we have set in suburbia, especially when neighbors have gotten into competitive serial holiday outdoor decorating through-out the year; the Christmas holiday season just brings this impulse to ultimate glorious flower.

Myself, I am occasionally nostalgic for the days when the standard was a couple strings of multicolored lights along the eaves and a wreath with a red ribbon on the door. If you really want to put on the dog, maybe some more wreaths in the front windows, or making them yourself out of pine or holly and adorned a la Colonial Williamsburg with fruits and nuts and things.

No, really - that was all that was required, back in the day; modest, tasteful and not all that much of a hassle for my father and brothers. An hour or so on the Sunday after Thanksgiving with a 12-foot ladder and an extension cord would do it, especially since our house was a single-story bungalow, and much of it couldn't be seen from the street anyway.

But in the last decade or two, exterior decorating for the Christmas holidays has gotten to a point of electrical complexity, an infinite variety of design elements, and increasing expectations that are all well beyond the capabilities of mortal man or woman. It seems that a lot of homeowners and businesses too - taken the option of throwing in the DIY towel and hiring professionals, just to keep level with the expectations of neighbors or competitors - and to minimize the risk of falling from a very tall ladder, or from the roof of a tall house with a very pitched roofline.

After a certain point - and at a certain age, if the pocket-book allows - this has tremendous appeal. Pay someone else to do the work; someone with the required safety gear and a very much taller ladder. Then one may confidently expect a polished and effortlessly superior Martha-Steward level of professional appearance - and no ugly things such as exploding Santas or a bushel-basket-sized ball of tangled strings of lights to blight the holiday . . . and someone will come and tidy it all away after New Years.

Then again, we can always go back to the single strand of lights and ornamented wreath on the front door days. Personally, I kind of like the examples at Colonial Williamsburg, or natural wreaths and garlands. If I were made of money, I'd spend some of it on that kind of decorating for the holidays. Is there anyone game for downsizing Christmas decorating expectations all the way around?

Thought not. Carry on, y'all. But be safe about it, ok?

Merry Christmas everyone, especially those overseas unable to spend time with their families! We support our Troops!