Christmas Lights.

Happily overcast most of the day, mid-fifties, the half-scent of something like rain in the air. And rain's actually in the forecast overnight. Light rain, but at this point, I'll take what's offered. Also there's some kind of wind warning for tomorrow, which will mean a long day for the ANYLF staff.

The December Gourmet arrived over the weekend with five or six impossible cookies on the cover, three or four of which I'll probably try on about the fifteenth after I've lost my mind and need some kind of a project. Got the lights up on the house this afternoon, all hung kind of slapdash across the front porch, blue lights around the door in tribute to my grandmother, who has huge blue lights on the front of her house each Christmas. Actual lightbulb-sized blue lights. Growing up, every other Christmas anything I saw anywhere was red and green, or multi-colored. Her lights were always blue and only blue. Blue ornaments on her flocked tree.

I can't get behind the whole actually-divine-son-of-God-in-the-virgin-womb thing, outside of what a genuinely beautiful metaphor some of it can be in the right hands, but I do love Christmas, and just this evening felt myself finally swinging around to it. It was hard getting there this year, but our good friends dropped by this noon with two CDs full of things like Lou Rawls singing White Christmas, Merle Haggard singing some anthem about poverty and how his little girl might not get any presents this year, and the Pogues yelling at each other — an unexpected gift on a gray day and the perfect way to start the season. Lights on the house, then, dog on the porch helping out, the same lights as last year, all carefully put away in the closet and dragged back out once a year, the faulty strands checked light by light, and on top of that I raked the damn yard and blew off the deck: I'm afraid the born-again neighborhood association newsletter people are going to think I'm on their side.

I ain't.

It's a melancholy season, like all good seasons. Happy Xmas to all, and to all a good night.