The Christmas holidays have not been quite what I hoped for this year. Despite multiple vaccinations and diligent mask-wearing, Craig and I both came down with Covid a couple weeks before Christmas. He got it first and is over it now, testing negative two days running, but my tests are still positive.

I love the holidays and plan special events well in advance. But, as the saying goes, (wo)man plans and God laughs. At this point, having missed three parties, two concerts, a holiday light show, and a theater performance, I’m just praying for a negative test so I don’t also have to miss our family gathering on Christmas Day. We’ll see. I have to admit I’ve been feeling pretty blue about the whole thing.

On the other hand. Our Covid cases were mild, like a cold with a lingering cough. We are safe and warm and spending the holidays together in our lovely home. Before Covid hit us, I had loaded up on groceries. And our freezer is well stocked, though its contents are not always well labeled. (“What’s this?” “I don’t know. Let’s thaw it and have it for dinner!”) We have Amazon Prime and Netflix and bird feeders to amuse us, and we’ve watched a bunch of Christmas movies: Love Actually, Trading Places, While You Were Sleeping, It’s a Wonderful Life, and Die Hard. Instead of going out, we celebrated Craig’s birthday at home, which turned out to be fun and memorable.

And, fortunately, we’re generally pretty good at keeping ourselves occupied. So there’s plenty to be thankful for, and I’m trying to remember that.

O, Christmas Tree

Before we got sick, Craig and I made our annual trek down to Four Winds Ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains to cut down a truly splendid tree. A little too splendid, if truth be told: set atop the big chest in our front room it sprawls across the entire bay window. I had to trim off the top so the star wouldn’t scrape the ceiling.

Craig tested positive for Covid the next day, so while he rested, I decorated. And because I’m a bit — okay, extremely — fussy about how the lights and ornaments go on, this was fine with me. In fact, I always trim the tree myself, Covid or no Covid. I have a system:

• First, the lights. I know, everyone does this, but I flatter myself that my method yields the best results (!). A key element is the incandescent colored lights. I admit that white lights look beautiful and elegant, but to me they always feel a bit austere, while colored lights seem cozier and homier. And there have to be lots of them — I mean lots — and not just along the edges of the tree. You have to tuck them in deep between the branches to light the tree from the inside. Try wrapping a strand around the trunk! Since our tree sits atop a big chest, I put on the lights before hoisting up the tree.
• Next come the shiny glass baubles — the traditional balls along with other styles. Their job is to multiply the light by reflecting it and, again, you have to tuck some of them deep into the tree so the whole of it twinkles.
• After that, it’s the more fanciful glass ornaments that have a lovely, vintage feel to them — or not. Glass icicles and bells, miniature houses and churches… Putting on all the baubles of one type lets me disperse them evenly over the tree. And, naturally, I pack ornaments of the same kind together, so it’s easy to implement my system the following year. Yes, I know it’s fussy — but it works!

• The figurative ornaments come next. I have a collection of storybook characters that my aunt gave my sisters and me many, many Christmases ago. Some of them are now a tad decrepit, but I always love hanging them on the tree. And then there are our newer acquisitions, including lots of bird-themed ornaments in various materials and a few pieces picked up on our travels — a star carved from the horn of a Ugandan Ankole cow; a bauble in a William Morris design purchased at his home outside London.
• Finally, I top off the tree with wooden and straw snowflakes, not forgetting the straw star at the top.

And voilà! The tree is ready for sitting next to, sipping a glass of wine, and relaxing before dinner — which is one of my favorite things about the holiday season.

Let there be lights!

Our simple white outdoor lights, which had been in place ever since we laboriously hung them up a few years ago, had begun sagging here and there, and some of the strands had gone dark. I have to admit that they were looking a bit sad. For the last couple of Christmases we comforted ourselves by agreeing that once we painted the house we would put up new lights. Well, this was finally the year!

Craig did almost all the work, my principal job being to hold the tall ladder in place while he strung strands of lights around the second-floor windows. We plan to leave these in place for as long as they last, so Craig meticulously weatherproofed the connections by wrapping them with duct tape and then with foil, finally securing them with metal versions of the sort of zip ties they use for makeshift handcuffs in police shows. (If you’re going to do something, do it right!) We hung a wreath on the front door, and our outdoor decorating was done.

Pleased as we are with our own lights, they pale in comparison to what some of our neighbors do. We live three blocks from the stretch of Thompson Avenue known locally as “Christmas Tree Lane.” Every year after Thanksgiving, residents go all out with lights and decorations, ranging from the restrained and elegant to the weird and whimsical. Throughout December, hundreds of people come each night to walk the block, gawp at the displays, and take selfies in front of their favorites. This year Craig and I masked up and checked things out before the crowds got too thick.

Such traditional figures as snowmen, reindeer, and elves rub shoulders with “Peanuts” characters enjoying a skating party, a sleigh pulled by lighted lawn flamingoes, Star Wars AT-AT walkers, and other creatures from popular culture. Though my own taste runs more to elegant simplicity, I have to admit that nothing says Christmas quite like a T-Rex in a Santa hat!

Every year one house offers an especially spectacular display inspired by A Nightmare Before Christmas. Along with Jack Skellington and other characters from the animated film, you’ll see flashing lights, a progression of changing colors, and even choreographed sound-and-light shows. We saw this one set to the famous march from “The Nutcracker” (Act 1, Scene 2).

Keeping busy

Craig and I spent the first few days of Covid sleeping a lot more than usual. But once we were feeling more energetic, we both got to work on tasks that had been on the back burner. Craig has been especially diligent: he put up the stained glass windows in my studio — the ones I finally finished last month after they’d languished in a box for more than a decade! He also rebuilt our compost bins, figured out how to install a gutter in the narrow space between the studio and the garage next door, and added new roofs to parts of the old shed. Impressive!

As for me, I wrapped up my second semester of pottery class (more about this in a separate post), organized some Christmas presents, read several novels, and finally got started again on this blog.

So it turns out that there were after all some benefits to being holed up for a couple of weeks this December. I’m eager to be past this isolation but glad to be reminded of its unexpected blessings.

Here’s a Christmas round to wrap up:

We wish all good friends here
a Merry, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

• The great Christmas tree hunt
• Sing we joyous all together!