Season's greetings

Well the tree is up, the lights are strung, each decoration has been lovingly placed upon its branch (and moved when it was found to be in reach of the puppy.)  Christmas is here once again!

I can't start a Christmas decoration blog without first showing off the nutcracker collection.  As a collection I think it's stopped growing now, but I do so love them, and they look so festive on our long windowsill (in fact if you trawl back through my blog, you'll see them on parade here pretty much every year since we moved here).  This year I've even given them their own set of lights, and I hope you'll agree that they look pretty excellent illuminated against the night sky.

Our tree is always an eclectic centrepiece.  Hanging off its branches are some of the decorations from our childhoods, ones we've given each other over the years, and ones we've collected from our travels.  We both like picking up a decoration when we've been somewhere memorable - a star from the Christmas markets in Salzburg; an Easter Island head from the American Museum of Natural History in New York; kiwi baubles from Auckland; a wooden harbour bridge from The Rocks in Sydney.  It makes our tree feel personal, like we're hanging up our own unique memories.

Of course, Christmas isn't just about decorations. One of the old-fashioned joys of the season is to sit for an hour or two and flick through the Radio Times, highlighting things that I'll never remember to watch, and inevitably ending up on a classic Christmas episode of Morecambe and Wise, the Two Ronnies, or a Top of the Pops Christmas Special from 1993.  And if that's not enough, I know a couple of links on Youtube that'll take me direct to the Dean Martin Christmas Show (1968) or the amazing Andy Williams Christmas Show (1966), all of which goes to show that the oldies are indeed the goldies.  And if the viewing runs dry, well that's ok too - one of the absolute pleasures of this time of year is that it allows time for books.  I've just finished A Maigret Christmas by Georges Simenon, and am moving onto a British Library classic crime novel The Christmas Egg by Mary Kelly.  Then of course there are the anthologies, which I'll dip in and out of as the season winds on.  I'm loaded up with books for the next several years I think, so time to pause and snuggle into the armchair on a winter's night is music to my ears.

So it's fair to say that Christmas has arrived, and we intend to make the very best of it here at home.  How are you spending your Christmas, this year?