Sunday Salon: Decorating

It's been a busy week here. Of course, there was the influx of family for Thanksgiving, which was preceded by a flurry of cooking and cleaning. More cooking than cleaning, I'm afraid. Then we all stuffed ourselves shamefully. (But I'm not a half bad cook so it was at least tasty gluttony: turkey, stuffing, squash, dried sweet corn, mashed potatoes, cranberry, green beans with almonds and dill, lemon and garlic spinach, rolls, chived yorkshire puddings, 2 pumpkin pies, cherry pie, and an apple crisp.) Once the tryptophan-induced coma lifted on Friday, while the others zoned out to the raucous cheers of yet more televised football, I decorated for Christmas. And I admit that in this, as in so much, I go a bit overboard. A few small pictures that by no means shows it all.



But when I am decorating (and yes, I realize the entire top of the tree is balder than a babies bottom--that just helps me know how tall the kids are, or in this case, are not, this year), as with any true bibliophile, I have Christmas books I set out to showcase. The collection as it stands right now includes:

The Amazing Christmas Extravaganza by David Shannon
The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg
Santa's Favorite Story by Hisako Aoki
Letters From Father Santa by J.R.R. Tolkein
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson
The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore

I can't figure out what happened to my copy of A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas but the collection would be incomplete without it so I'm on the hunt for it in my now emptied bins. Also, I need to dig out Truman Capote's Christmas Memories, One Christmas, and The Thanksgiving Visitor and Jostein Gaarder's The Christmas Mystery and add the two of them to the pile that comes out every year to sit enticingly on the coffee table.

In addition to these much loved books, my poor children have to endure a mother who has advent calendars where the prize is to pull out a small, ornament book telling a portion of A Christmas Carol, which then gets hung on the already overcrowded tree. None of the stale chocolate goodness that other children find in their advent calendars! Just literary treats here, thank-you very much.

Of course, there are several Christmas-themed books I'm hoping to read for the first time this year as well but whether or not they find a permanent home in the close to my heart collection or not remains to be seen. So far the selections are: The Last Noel by Michael Malone, An Irish Country Christmas by Patrick Taylor, Wishin' and Hopin' by Wally Lamb, Let It Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle (right before I re-gift this teen author collection to my own tween), and Christmas in Camelot by Brenda Jernigan. The latter is one of many Christmas-set romances I have sitting around here but I can only take so much holiday cheer in my reading before I turn into the Grinch.
Distinctly odd in a person with an appallingly large collection of decorations and festive books I'll admit, but I am nothing if not a contradiction in terms. Say, that's another book I need to pull off the general shelves and put in my permanent coffee table collection. Because really, who doesn't love the Grinch? Hmmmm. Wonder if there's a book with Heat Miser and Cold Miser in it or if I'll just have to watch the movie on permanent loop again this year.