In With the New

Like the Roman god Janus who faces backward and forward, I like looking back on the year behind me. I like to think of highlights. 

That hike yesterday was one of them! It got in under the wire. 

Another highlight was a dinner last week with old friends, including one friend I had not seen in decades. So that makes two last-minute highlights.

And another late-breaking highlight: I got my first real Christmas tree in years. It is seven feet tall. That is it above!

My friend Cori helped me. We went to Home Depot and I know, we always want to go to cute little local places, however there is something to be said for simplicity. Home Depot goes and feeds your tree into a machine to bag it up and from there it goes into your car in a snap, no muss, no fuss. Well, I do not think I could have done it without Cori. But still.

Here is my tree being processed. This was on Dec. 10. My friend Cori is looking on critically making sure all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed. Cori is thorough. She is first generation German, mother from the Black Forest, father from Berlin. Nothing escapes her.

Cori also helped me to put twinkly lights up in the sunroom which are more prepossessing than the old redneck lights I had before.

Another highlight of the year has been Howard playing at the Hyatt every Friday. This continues from last year and continues this year as well. What reminded me was the Hyatt also upped its Christmas tree game this year. They have a tree that is world class. Pictures do not do it justice however this is my attempt.

Look at this. Here I was supposed to be remembering the highlights of my year and all I wind remembering are the highlights of the Christmas season. So far. 

It is not over yet!

You Can't Tell the Difference After Dark

Because I have been having house renovations done, I have been on my high horse and running my mouth about I might get a real Christmas tree this year.

My old Christmas tree has been getting yellowed over the years.

Fie on these trees, you know? You put them up for a couple of years and then you read in the fine print, oh, do not place these trees in sunlight or they will discolor.

Where do you place your Christmas tree if not in the window?

I ask you.

Anyway, so the old tree, the one I have been putting up for the last 10 years or whatever, the tree Howard bought for Big Blue, it has become old and yellowed and I decided I would put it out with the trash and get a real tree. The house is looking better and the tree should as well.

However.

Weeks pass. I would wonder: What am I going to do about my tree?

Finally I had an idea. 

Why don't I just put up my old tree?

The thought struck me like a thunderbolt. Like Donner and Blitzen. The tree  is still here. I had not the stomach to put it out at the curb. The house is not yet a showplace anyway. There are tools and paint cans and stuff all over the house. Furniture has been moved everywhere. Nothing will be close to normal until after the First Day of Christmas anyway.

Hence, the old yellowed tree lives to see another Christmas!

And as the old blues song...  

... goes, you can't tell the difference after dark.

So true! I just said that to my friend Ryan just now. He had gotten in touch helpfully to tell me that trees are marked down at Family Dollar. However I had just finished putting my old tree up. That is it up above. It looks spiffy, does it not? 

Besides which Dave, the handyman helping me with my house, he and I have hatched a plan. In the spring, when the weather is warm, Dave is going to take certain beat-up radiator covers I have in the house and spray paint them white.

"Dave," I said, "could you spray paint my tree along with them?"

And he said he would!

Spray-painting these old trees works. I have seen that on YouTube so it must be true. So we have a plan to rejuvenate the tree. And meanwhile...

You can't tell the difference after dark!

Brenda's beautiful Christmas tree

Yesterday I wrote about my struggle with my Christmas tree. Just to put things in perspective, here is a look at my friend Brenda and her Christmas tree.

That is Brenda's tree up above!

At first when I saw that picture in my photos from last week, I did not look closely and I thought it was my tree. I thought to myself, I should not be so hard on myself. Look at my tree, it looks good!

Then I realized it was Brenda's tree.

Everyone needs a Brenda in your life to give you something to strive for. Brenda has put in years as an interior designer, working for Ethan Allen and other places. Her house is perfect. Brenda and I met when she was an Etsy customer. She purchased a print to go in an AirBnB her son was running, and then she framed it beautifully and also framed my little signed notes for the picture and put them on a table by the print. I went over to see the setup. I thought I was dreaming! Anyway that was how we met.

Now I just look agog at everything Brenda does. She has beautiful candles that are fake but do not look it. They are on a timer so they go on every day at the same time. Probably the timer makes allowances for sunset and sunrise. I would not be surprised!

Brenda had a few of us over for a tree-trimming party the other day. The ornaments were impeccably laid out. There was a bowl full of hooks -- no scrabbling in the corners of the old cardboard boxes that hold normal people's ornaments. And there was this buffet. 

Here is Brenda putting the star atop the tree as Ryan watches critically to make sure it is not off in any way.

The beautiful people by the buffet. Notice the wreath in the back window.

I give you Brenda, left, and me, right, enjoying the occasion. Did I mention she had the most delicious red wine?

Whenever I see Brenda I get the urge to do what motivation guru Brian Tracy always says to do when you want to reach a goal. You map out piece by piece what it would take for you to reach that goal, which in my case is to live in an environment like Brenda's.

Every journey starts with a single step, however. And I took that step yesterday.

The tree is up. The lights are on! It was a struggle but still.

I am on my way!

The Christmas Tree Struggle

Tonight I put up my tree. I always report on how that goes and this year will be no exception.

However it will be different.

What a struggle this was!

I actually put up the tree yesterday. Today I set out to add the lights. Normally this is no big deal. But this year, ay yi yi.

I made history. This is the first time I ever put all the lights on the tree -- and then took them all off again and started over!

Has anyone ever done that in the long history of Christmas trees? I bet not! 

What happened was, I had a new string of lights from CVS and I wanted to add them to the tree. They were colored lights on a white string. I already had two strings of colored lights on a white string but I had them strung up around my front sun room, as in a redneck bar. I was hoping I could keep those lights up.

However. I realized I had no other colored lights on white strings. Also this new one I got, it was so short that it reached only halfway around the tree. For crying out loud! I had assumed it would at least go around the tree twice or something.

Fie on this string of lights!

So I took down the lights that had been strung up around the sun room and pressed them into service. Eventually I had the tree covered. But it did not look right. I fussed and fussed with it. I overlapped strings, looped them around in U-turns, tried this, tried that. But there was no getting around that the tree was well lit around the bottom -- that's where the new string was -- and kind of sparse in parts around the top.

Not only that but you could see wires. "I don't want to see any wires," Marvin Hamlisch said his mother told him when he got his first apartment. Hamlisch would gab on and on at Holiday Pops concerts and you would die you were laughing so hard. Anyway, you saw wires when you looked at my Christmas tree. That ain't right.

I worked and worked, trying to fix things. My Cat Jeoffry yawned and went to sleep. 

My Black Cherry Berry tea grew cold. 

My treasured Carmen Dragon 1950s Capitol Records Christmas album finished Side 2 and shut off.

I kept working, grimly, in silence. About a half an hour later I gave up. I started tearing the lights down. I could not believe I was doing that and when I was half way through, I bitterly regretted it.

However. There was no turning back!

The story has a happy ending. When the lights were all off the tree and lying all over the floor, I flipped the record over and started it again. Carmen Dragon's "O Christmas Tree" filled the room. It made my house feel like a 1939 movie set. I started the lights from scratch, putting the new lights in the middle instead of on the bottom. And in five minutes I was done.

Another Christmas, another Christmas tree. Well, still the same Christmas tree. But another experience.

One for the books!

The Candlemas compromise

Not to shock anyone, but I do believe I have officially the last Christmas tree up in our neighborhood. 

This year, I have to say, there were more contenders for the title. Especially along the "better" streets, like Nottingham and Middlesex, I saw trees up well into mid-January.

Some of those houses still have their lights up in the trees outside, which I love. And they have their wreaths up as well. But the trees are down. You know what, they were probably real, and real trees have to go out to the curb at some point. I sort of forget that. Good for those folks on Nottingham and Middlesex, keeping the season as it should be kept.

However. Tomorrow, Feb. 2, is the ancient feast of Candlemas which marks the end of the Christmas season.

After Mass the tree will have to come down.

OK, I will give myself till the next day. It is just that this year the tree is so pretty. I really worked on it. Just the other day I was rearranging some ornaments.

Let us look on the bright and twinkly side. I am very happy that last year I initiated my own new personal custom of leaving the lights up year-round. After they come off the tree they will go up around the windows. Like last year!

That is a nice compromise, is it not? 

I sort of miss them around the windows, anyway. I was tempted to leave the lights up around the windows and get new lights for the tree. But then I thought: no. It has to be an exchange. Otherwise when you take the tree down you are losing something.

I refuse to be a loser.

Let there be lights!

My tree is up!

Today I put up my Christmas tree!

I was waiting on purpose until late in Advent. But our church decorations are up now and so what the heck, I decided it was time. This is funny, on Facebook, there are certain friends saying they are not bothering with trees because they cannot have people over to their house to see it.

Fie on that philosophy, fie!

I want my Christmas tree no matter what!

My ancestry is German and you cannot keep a German from celebrating Christmas. Famous situations attest to that.

There is the great and true story about how in World War I, German soldiers in the trenches put up trees, and sang carols. Then they managed to call a truce with their British counterparts. All of them then partied together.

Then in the Revolutionary War there was the battle of Trenton, when American troops were able to surprise the Hessian soldiers, German mercenaries who were fighting for the British. They were able to pounce on them on Dec. 26 - the Hessians had been partying and had let their guard down.

Observe the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware on his way to surprise the Hessians. The painting is by a German artist, Emanuel Leutze.

That is a good painting! Obviously Leutze bore no grudge. Germans are going to celebrate Christmas. It is just how things are!

And so my tree is up and I never considered that it would not be so. This is my fake tree, the one I got, yikes, way back in 2012. No wonder it is getting yellowed. But it really does look lovely once the lights go down. And that is when you most appreciate a tree, when the lights are down.

I had to take down the lights I had put around the windows of the sun room so I could put them on the tree. I sort of regretted taking them down, because I loved the look of those lights around the windows. But Christmas has to be different from the rest of the year. That was a smart decision I made, you know, to put up those lights, after last Candlemas.  It sweetens that pill of having to take down the tree. Often after you take down the tree the weather stays bleak for some time. And I never got sick of those lights. In the summer, if it was a dark rainy day, I even used to put them on in the morning sometimes. Anyway, that is a tradition I will keep, my year-round lights in my front room.

But for now they are on the tree.

We need a little Christmas, now!

The Christmas tree quandary

I have a terrible confession: My Christmas tree -- pictured at left when it was still bright white -- is still up.

I keep promising myself I will take it down but then I do not.
Part of the problem is, it is still snowy outside. When it goes up into the 40s or something, then you can think spring, and that is the time to take down the tree. When you get into Lent, Lent means spring, and that is the time to take down the tree.

Not now!

Last week I went past some of the better houses, on Nottingham and streets like that, and some of them still had trees lit up outside. So I am not alone.

Still I feel a little funny plugging in the tree. I know it is time to take it down. We have passed Septuagesima Sunday and Sexagesima -- hee hee -- Sunday. Candlemas is past.

What is wrong with me?

It is not even a real tree. It does not have to go out on the curb or die a terrible death like the tree in Hans Christian Andersen's "The Fir Tree."

It simply goes into its box and is put away, in preparation for coming out in again in what, a few months?

Why can't I take down my tree?

Hahaha... I am laughing over all my old Christmas tree stories.

There was one year I went without. Unbelievable but true.

There was another year when it was the Fourth Sunday of Advent and I did not have a tree and rushed out to get one and wound up in Christmas tree stand emergency mode.

There was the year I put the tree up on Christmas Eve. I could not get to it before then!

Oh, look! There was one year I did not take the tree down till Ash Wednesday. And Ash Wednesday that year was March 9!!

That is what I will do this year. I will take the tree down on Ash Wednesday.

I must be strong!

Back to the drawing board

I am doing a watercolor challenge. I love these art challenges you find on the Internet, and I have hooked onto one of them.

This is from Doodlewash, an international group of, ahem, watercolorists. I like that they are better than I am. I want to play with the big kids. I did some painting when I was a kid but I have no pretentions. I would like to learn from people who are better at it than I am.

So every day I do a watercolor. It really only takes minutes. The one I did today, Tree, I did in the morning between eating breakfast and making Howard's lunch.

But seriously, you do learn. You try this and you try that and eventually you find something you like. The picture at the top of this post is my painting of, ahem, Holly. That was the prompt the other day.

And before that was "Lights." I was kind of proud of these lights, you know?

OK, so the green one was a little bit whacked. The rest look pretty good.

There is something so relaxing about watercolors. They just know where to go. You dip your brush in water and you dip them in the paint, and then the paints take it from there. In my humble and limited experience.

Also doing something like this ever day reminds you that you can work more artistry into your everyday life. Leonard Pennario told me that when he was a kid he decided that he wanted to enjoy everything he did. This is cousin to that.

For instance last Sunday I enjoyed making my coffee hour signs.

What is next for me? That question is easy to answer.

Tomorrow is "Star."

Another day, another drawing!

We're putting the tree up ...

... or we should be, anyway!

Driving to the Philharmonic last night, I said to Howard, all the better houses have their Christmas trees up already. Up and down Nottingham Terrace, those trees were sparkling. I cannot remember a prettier Christmas. They all had their trees up.

I do not!

I love putting the tree up. The day I put my Christmas tree up is one of the happiest days of the year. If not the happiest. It depends on what happens the rest of the year.  And it is funny because almost invariably it is just me. Howard is not home yet. I have a new tradition with myself, I put on the Carmen Dragon Christmas album pictured above, and I pour a glass of wine, and I trim the tree, and I am happy.

This year little George and Barbara, my niece and nephew, have been lobbying to be part of my tree trimming. But I do not know about that! I look forward to this date with myself. Well, I could be persuaded.

But anyway...

The day I take the tree down is one of the saddest days of the year. I hate taking the tree down, I just do. I always do it under duress.

I might wind up being one of those Charlie Chaplin people who keep the tree up all year round! My friend Melissa does that. It can be done.

However then you would miss that happy day when you put it up! And that is what I am awaiting right now.

Today was the first Sunday of Advent. I love this day. It thrills me. Cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. There will be signs in the moon and in the stars. It is time for the tree. There are people at church who try to remind me that Advent historically was a time of penance, but I am sorry, that horse...

... is out of the corral and there is no putting him back in.

And so I am seeking to put up my tree. It is just that it has been hovering around 50 degrees and that is too warm. Also it was November. As a friend said, you need it to be December. Now finally it is December.

We have been having caroling practice at my house for several weeks now and so I am thinking it is time.

Perhaps tomorrow is the day!

The cat and the tree

I put up my tree on Sunday. It was Gaudete Sunday! That is THE day to put up your tree.

All kinds of people put up their trees. I saw it on Facebook. Jeoffry assisted me in putting up my tree as you can see in the photo above.

After it was up I sent this photo to Howard who put it up on Facebook.

OK, well, things are not perfect. But we are moving into the season!

The day you put up the tree is always one of the happiest days of the year. The day you take it down is, I am sorry, one of the saddest. I hate to take down the Christmas tree! One of these years I will just not do it. It will stay up until next year. Some of my Facebook friends have already taken that route.

I should just leave it up all year! I am a grown-up and this is America.

And Jeoffry would love it!

Standing tall

Today being Septuagesima Sunday I piously decided to take down my Christmas tree. Septuagesima Sunday is sort of the start of Lent. Lent does not technically begin until Ash Wednesday but the countdown begins today.

I had been talking a good game about keeping my tree up till Candlemas on Feb. 2. But how do you argue when Lent begins to cast its shadow? The Nativity Scene was gone from St. Anthony's this morning. The priest wore purple vestments. And there was my tree, still in the window?

T'aint right, I lectured myself. Take it down. And while you are at it, take all those Christmas magazine issues you have been cooking out of and put them away until next year.

But then, being that I have trouble making decisions, I decided to get on the Internet and double check. I Googled "Catholic When To Take Down Christmas Tree."

There were the usual folks saying Epiphany. Yeah, yeah. That ship has sailed. One Catholic site, I am not going to call it in, but it said, "Observe the holiday of Epiphany by taking down your Christmas tree."

What kind of a sad sack holiday observation is that? Someone has something screwed up. When Epiphany comes that is when you unpack your little statues of the Three Kings and place them around your manger scene. Then you make King Cake and feast on it with your friends. Fie on that Web site. Fie!

Then I found this essay on the Catholic Answers web site. 

It was titled "Catholics! Keep Your Tree Up." And it concluded that it is right and just to keep the tree up until, yes, Candlemas. Even if Septuagesima Sunday gets there first! He specifies that.

Quoth the writer:

 "If you want to be really traditional, you can celebrate what the faithful called “Christmastide” before the liturgical reforms that followed the Second Vatican Council. In the old rite, or what we today call the Extraordinary Form, Christmastide lasted for 40 days to correspond with the 40 days of Lent, and the 40 days from Easter to Ascension Thursday.  

A 40-day party? Gloria in Excelsis! (And people say Trad Cats are a dour bunch.)

End result, as we say here in Buffalo: instead of taking the tree down I plugged it in. Jeoffry was dancing at my heels. He loves the Christmas tree. We are always finding him just sitting there gazing at it. He sat down right then and there and feasted his eyes. He is a Trad Cat!

We have another week!

Perhaps I will listen to Christmas music. Perhaps I will bake more cookies.

On the other hand ... definitely I will!

Oh, the holidays

Wow, you blink and a fortnight is gone. Here I was feeling good about keeping up the Web log which is good therapy but all of a sudden the last thing I wrote was about the dead Beethoven.

The dead Beethoven!

How about the dead Web logger?

My aunt, my Auntie Rose, used to say, "Oh, the holidays." It would absolve you of any guilt over anything.  This was the same aunt who loved "The Thorn Birds," remember? And whose photographs miraculously survived the Great Flood of '08.

"Oh, the holidays," Auntie Rose used to say. And all would be forgiven.

Once my brother George and I were staying with Auntie Rose in California where she lived in, you guessed it, Santa Rosa. And something went wrong, we were all fighting about something, Auntie Rose was mad about something.

And I said, or George said, "Oh, Auntie Rose, I'm sorry. It's just the holidays --"

And she said: "Oh, the holidays."

And all was forgiven!

Anyway, I hope my spotty Web logging can be likewise forgiven. Oh, the holidays. We went to my sister's in East Aurora for Christmas. I took a picture of her magnificent tree. Katie always has these strange skinny trees and they would look terrible in anyone else's hands but in her hands they look like out of Martha Stewart magazine.

What a picture! I must have been into the eggnog. On the Second Day of Christmas I made amazing cookies, the recipe to which I shall presently share. Yesterday, George and I and Georgie and Barbara celebrated the Fourth Day of Christmas by viewing the Festival of Trees at the one, the only, the iconic Robert Moses Power Plant.

And do not fall over from shock but I have been doing a lot of work pulling the book together. Hence the gap in the Web log. But I will be more reliable correspondent. I have to say I enjoy it. It is good therapy.

Oh, the holidays.

They continue!

Tree's company

One of the happiest days of the year is the day the Christmas tree goes up!

It is up because my niece and nephew Barbara and Georgie forced the issue. They wanted to come over and help me decorate the tree and that gave me a deadline. I am a journalist. I cannot do anything without a deadline. It is one reason the book on Leonard Pennario has taken so long.

Anyway, I awoke Sunday, the appointed day, and just flew. Before church I got something into the Crock Pot and something else into the bread machine. Home again, I had to locate the ornaments and the lights. It only took about a dozen prayers to St. Anthony but I found them. Why hadn't I gone looking for them the day before? Oh, right, because the day before I had been cleaning out the front sun room, that was why.

End result, as we say here in Buffalo: Sun room is cleaned up. Tree is up.

Cookies are baked.

My niece Barbara is just in that phase of life where she is in awe of all my stuff.

"Oh!" she said. "You have the most beautiful ornaments!"

That is amazing, to have someone admiring all your stuff! Then she marveled at my orange scarf, which you can see her wearing above. Next up for admiration was my collection of cookie cutters, the result of another furtive prayer to St. Anthony because I had not known we would be baking cookies today.

More details on the cookies to follow. Meanwhile...

We feast our eyes.

Take a bough

Shame, shame! I had to bring work home this weekend. I was behind!

But this evening when I felt I had made some progress I let myself put up my tree. It is way early, I know, for traditionally minded folks like me. Some of my close friends will admonish me. I will have to keep my fingers crossed and hope they are pacified with some eggnog. Or perhaps some Bailey's Irish Cream which, who knows, I just might make again this season.

Either that or I could just genuinely apologize and say I could not help it. I am not alone! I know a lot of traddies just like myself and most of them have put their trees up. Especially the ones with kids. It just cannot be helped.

Technically the Christmas season does not begin until Christmas Eve but that horse is out of the barn and it cannot be put back in overnight.

So, my tree. It is the Martha Stewart white fake tree I got from Howard. I realize taking it out of the box that it has become a bit yellowed. It is because I have always put it in the window. Now I see you are not supposed to put it in direct sunlight. Of course I did not bother reading the instructions any of the other years. So that is another horse that is out of the barn.

Who cares, after dark it still looks great. And that is when you enjoy your tree, in the evening. And I do enjoy it. Leonard Pennario loved Christmas and so do I.

And so does Jeoffry! He was into this tree idea from the beginning, as you can see from that picture. I texted that picture to my sister Margie who got a kick out of his orange ears. Margie is so sweet and she recognizes artistic greatness when she sees it.

I can tell you exactly how many lights there are on my tree. There are 600!

My friend Ryan gave me a wonderful present last year, three sets of LED lights made especially for fake white trees. Other years, I used old strings of lights with dark green strings. Ryan got these lights marked down after Christmas at Kmart. There are 200 lights in a pack and he gave me three sets so I used all of them, every last light. You cannot see my tree for the lights!

It is hard to see but the tree is topped with a blue light. I arranged the light string that way in tribute to Kmart, because of Kmart's Blue Light Special.

Right now Jeoffry and the tree are content to co-exist.

I hope they stay that way!

It might as well be spring

I was just looking again at that weird sun yesterday. It looked like an eclipse!

Helped along by the smoke from that smokestack at the fire station.

With all that excitement I forgot this news flash: Not to disappoint people but I finally took down my Christmas tree. Sunday was, ahem, Septuagesima Sunday, which heralds the dawn of Lent. In the Traditional Calendar it is as if we start Lent early. Thanks a heap, Traditional Calendar! Although last year it began a lot earlier than this year. Last year Septuagesima Sunday fell on Mozart's birthday.

The way it works is Septuagesima means 70 days, then Sexagesima, 60 days, then Quinquegesima, 50 days. Then  you hit Ash Wednesday at the 40-day mark and bang, you are into Lent.

These are approximate numbers of course. But you get the idea. Thinking of all this brings back my time in California with Leonard. I was new to the Latin traditional Mass and Pennario and I used to discuss it and he used to explain things to me sometimes. And yes, we giggled about Sexagesima Sunday. How can you not?

"Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa," Pennario used to say, with that smile of his.

If you are new to Latin that means, "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault." It is part of the Public Confession you make of all your sins. See all the drama you miss not going to the traditional Mass. It is far more poetic and thrilling.

Anyway there is your trip down the Latin memory lane! Now the tree is packed away -- carelessly, I might have to go and re-pack it, but still. The space is cleared, and the sunlight is pouring in. I love winter and I hate to see it go. But from now on, as far as I am concerned, it is spring. It is early spring.

It is time to start checking for the daffodils!