Never too early to talk about yule logs.

Those who know me well know the fervor with which I celebrate Christmas. It is the apex of my year. In fact, just the other day, I was thinking "Wow, summer is almost over. It's almost Christmastime!" That's right, in my mental calendar fall is not fall, but rather the prelude to "Christmastime."

I'm not too proud to admit that one of the main reasons I'm excited about living in New York this next year is being there for the month of December. The Christmas decorations, the Rockefeller Christmas pomp and circumstance, the department store windows, the lights on the Empire State Building, the Rockettes, the general feel of the holiday hustle on a scale larger than I've ever seen before. This is a town that does Christmas.

So, imagine my surprise, nay goddamned falling-out-of-chair-with-excitement-ness , when I read this:

The campus Tree-Lighting Ceremony is a relatively new tradition at Columbia, inaugurated in 1998. It celebrates the illumination of the medium-sized trees lining College Walk in front of Kent and Hamilton Halls on the east end and Dodge and Journalism Halls on the west, just before finals week in early December. The lights remain on until February 28. Students meet at the sun-dial for free hot chocolate, performances by various a cappella groups, and speeches by the university president and a guest.

Immediately following the College Walk festivities is one of Columbia's older holiday traditions, the lighting of the Yule Log. The ceremony dates to a period prior to the Revolutionary War, but lapsed before being revived by University President Nicholas Murray Butler in the early 20th century. A troop of students dressed in Continental Army soldiers carry the eponymous log from the sun-dial to the lounge of John Jay Hall, where it is lit amid the singing of seasonal carols.[7] The ceremony includes readings of A Visit From St. Nicholas' by Clement Clarke Moore (Columbia College class of 1798) and Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus by Francis Pharcellus Church (Class of 1859).

The more I learn about Columbia, the deeper in love I fall.

Christmas roundup

Facts:

1) My family is totes cute when they're not criticizing my love for Barack Obama.

2) My grandmother is totes cute even when she IS criticizing my love for Barack Obama, in her favorite Christmas sweater.

3) My dad is totes cute, unconditionally.

4) My brother and I are way too rad for reality.  The addition of Daisy the Border Collie makes this snapshot mind-blowingly rad.

5) The fact that my mother bought me a harmonica for Christmas is also mind blowingly rad.

want/need

i am not satisfied by this blog template but far too distracted to do anything to change it right now. i needed to get that off my chest in case you were wondering. this evening i'm distracted by a certain felicitous moment which occurred last night as i got home from work. i've spent much of my free time this past week trying to find a way to adopt a stranger for christmas. my preference being that this stranger is the age/size of a youngish child who would otherwise be left off of the list. (i'm speaking, very specifically, about SANTA'S list here, people) lately i'm just blown away by kids: they're so incredible and wise and fragile and ... the potential! the thought of that being quashed by adult things beyond their control just makes me hurt. so i wanted to maybe, possibly, fulfill a wish, remind someone that his world is bigger and less scary than it may seem, and that someone somewhere is pulling for him. the problem? i couldn't find one! where were all of those giving trees i remembered were everywhere this time of year when i was a kid? we didn't have any clients this year to adopt and the ywca just wanted toiletries and canned goods (not that those aren't worthy needs). i was discouraged. and then i got home, opened my mailbox and found a newsletter from the seattle children's home, a local group that provides in-patient treatment for kids with severe developmental and learning disabilities (whose newsletter i have never, ever, seen anywhere, let alone in my mailbox, before yesterday). turns out they want people to adopt their kids for christmas. so 12 hours, two emails later, i have christopher. a 17 year old who loves art and music and who, an SCH staffer tells me, "could really use the extra support this time of year." he wants a discman and some new headphones and some books about drawing animals and cars and some pencils and nice sketchpads. so discman and books and pencils and sketchpads he will get. 'cause when i was 17, that's all i wanted too. and i didn't have things like poverty and disability looming over my head. i'm going to try and find these moments of felicity more often.

christmas time is here

I had every intention this evening of taking you on a virtual tour of my Christmas tree. Instead, I laze-d out and decided to lie on the couch and read "Atonement." I am reading "Atonement" because the movie is about to come out, looks totally hot, and I hate being "the girl who hasn't read the book." So, I'm sitting here reading the aforementioned hot book and it begins to get extremely hot. Hott, you might say/type. Flushed, I diffuse the situation by turning on the television. It is turned to "A Charlie Brown Christmas."* Woah. Suddenly the moment feels quite, um, inappropriate. The crucial lesson here being that when faced with the decision to choose between "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and some hot nudie scene of Ian McEwan's imagination, I will always, always choose Charlie Brown. This is because I love Christmas. So, back to my tree. I was taking pictures in preparation for the tree tour on my bazillion year old camera, which I haven't used since this time last year for the very same purpose, when I discovered some very old pictures of my cat. If you've not met her, you should; I'm quite in love with her and she will change your life. Last year was her very first christmas. I was having second thoughts about showing the pictures I found, but then though, fuck it. If you don't love cute, you are no friend of mine. And so I present, Olivine, aged 4 months. You can now die happy. And this one because, well, obviously. Right, the tree. Here's part. A kiwi from New Zealand. *It should, for some reason, be noted that when I turned on the tv, I was actually kind of secretly hoping Dancing With the Stars was on, because I'm fucking obsessed with Dancing With the Stars of late; and not so secretly kind of hoping that Marie Osmond will break her face mid-ridiculous-too-old-for-cute-uncomfortable-for-all-involved-hip-shake.