Today we head north to my folks’ house for a few days and we won’t be back home until after Christmas. So I thought I’d share some of our holiday decorations this year for my contribution to the Virtual Advent Tour.

Welcome to the Burrow! Please come in!

We grew up with fresh swags (made by my great-grandparents, I think) at Christmas, rather than wreaths, so that’s what I continue to go with. Some years I buy them ready made, and sometimes I cobble them together. This year, I bought the juniper greens at the farmers market, left them rubber banded as they came, and added this gigantic bow I’d had at the office from a gift basket I won a couple years ago. It’s started dropping bits of evergreen in the outside hallway, though, so I’m not sure it’ll make it to the new year. We’ll have to see what it looks like when we get back.

Just inside the door, on the breaker box, I’ve hung this silver wreath a former colleague made for me one Christmas. It hung on my office door year-round, so I’m glad I was able to find a spot for it.

Oh! Let me turn on Rudi’s bike for you. ::Fidgets with controller:: Okay, well, I can only get the colored lights on, but you get the idea. There’s also a strand of white lights that goes along with it. He says that he gets compliments every day as he commutes to work, and I believe it.

Come on into the living room.

Here, on this media cabinet, you’ll find all the battery-operated fairy light strands Mum and Dad bought for us this year (and their Christmas card, which didn’t lend itself well to being taped to the wall). It’s also got some of our holiday stuffed animals, some of the Jingle Elves my family has had for decades (they are NOT Elf on the Shelf riffraff), the seed pod Nativity scene Rudi’s mom gave us, the snow globe and luminary I made at the library a few years ago, and a Christmassy picture of Gramma and me that lives on that shelf year-round.

Let me be honest with you. This little tree only got put up tonight. It’s been sitting in its bag in the way since I brought it home from the office last month and we’d just move it around and around, because I wasn’t sure where I could put it that Corey wasn’t going to pull it down while we were away. The pie chest has been holding my plants (my orchids really aren’t thrilled with their sudden lack of natural light and I’m going to have to come up with a solution for that after the holidays). Usually there’s an apothecary jar of yarn right there, but I’ve moved that for the time being. I’ve had this little tree since my freshman year of college, when my Secret Santa gave it to me, along with some of the original decorations. A few more decorations came from my Secret Santa my senior year and otherwise it’s been decorated with ornaments and doodads from my coworkers, such as a nut from Costa Rica and a couple of finger puppets. I probably won’t plug the lights in this year, but I’m glad the tree made its way out finally.

Here is this year’s tree in its wonderful, monstrous glory. It’s the widest (six feet at the bottom!) tree we’ve had in the 15 years we’ve lived in this apartment and takes up two-thirds of the available space by the window. So if it looks a little scrunched up against furniture, it is. (Incidentally, can you believe they gave me a deal on the tree because it had a “hole” in the branch patterning in one spot? I explained it was going in a corner and that I wasn’t worried, but took the discount.) I’d had the tree skirt down, but picked it up when we flooded over the weekend. I’ll leave it up until we get back from up north. Our tree topper is a snowflake, and I didn’t do a great job getting it to stay on top of the tree this year, so it’s dangling down a bit and making the tree look a bit askew. I figure it’s symbolic of the year.

Oh, and that picture you can sort of see to the right of the tree?

There’s a gallery in the town where my best friend, Karen, and I get together where they sell prints of paintings by Carol Spinney, whom some of you may recognize as the man who portrayed Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street and who lives nearby. Karen and I were doing some Christmas shopping last year when I admired this print, and she went back the following weekend and bought it for me. Isn’t she awesome?

That’s it from the Burrow! Rudi will have a post for you tomorrow from Connecticut for our penultimate day of the 2018 Virtual Advent Tour.

I’m guessing today might be the final day at work for a lot of folks before the Christmas holiday, in which case, may it go speedily along. Today is also the Winter Solstice (winter officially arrives at 5:23 p.m. EST in North America/22:23 UTC). In honor of that, I offer one of my favorite Dar Williams holiday songs, “The Christians and the Pagans”:

Now, on to today’s host! Raidergirl3 at An Adventure in Reading has written a final post for us this season, sharing her traditional Christmas morning breakfast. I’m betting a bunch of folks try out the recipe she includes.

We’re back tomorrow with our antepenultimate post of the Virtual Advent Tour for 2018. See you then!

Honestly, I forgot it was Thursday. But then I remembered, so here are three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I’ve seen cars with Christmas lights as decorations earlier this season, but today was the first time I’ve seen a fake tree decorated on one’s roof.

2. I was one of the people highly disappointed last season when NBC opted not to renew Timeless, but I appreciated they were willing to give fans a tv movie to wrap up the outstanding story arcs. It aired tonight and did not disappoint.

3. I finally made it across town to one of the library branches to donate three bags of books that have been sitting in my car for a month. Now I just need to get to Goodwill to do the same with the gigantic bag of clothing taking up half my trunk.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Friends, may the peace and joy of the season be yours! Did you know that the U.N. has declared Dec. 20 to be International Human Solidarity Day, an official day on which to celebrate our unity through diversity; to work to make the world more peaceful, equitable, and safe; and to promote sustainable development and human rights across the globe? It seems to me all of those things are in keeping with the season of Advent — and the Virtual Advent Tour, too, in a small way — so let us put positive energy out into the world today with those goals in mind.

Our host today is new to the Virtual Advent Tour, Constance of Staircase Wit. She shares an annual Christmas celebration she takes part in, which should resonate with many of our literary-minded readers.

I’ll see you back here tomorrow!

Season’s greetings, readers! We’re back for our final Wednesday before Christmas. While you probably know Dec. 6th is when Western religions celebrate St. Nicholas Day, did you know that Eastern Orthodox religions celebrate it on Dec. 19? So happy St. Nicholas Day, once again!

As I mentioned last week, my Dad (DOD) composed two Virtual Advent Tour posts for us this year. While his first post looked at some of the earliest Christmas carols, his second fast forwards to more contemporary times.

Take it away, DOD!

Okay, so not every Christmas pop song originates in the United States and since the passing of Dick Clark and Casey Kasem, other music charts have become even more important than ours. One of the most notable is in merry old England and calls attention to the most popular single recording on Christmas Day of each year. This pop chart began in 1952, and in 1955, the first Christmas themed song to become a number one was “Christmas Alphabet” by Dickie Valentine, a British cover song of a McGuire Sisters hit the previous year in the States. Since then, there have been nine additional Christmas songs, the last of which was the most recent version of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid 20 in 2004.

Christmas Number Ones first gained notoriety in 1973 when British rock bands Slade and Wizzard deliberately released Christmas tunes, “Merry Christmas, Everybody” and “I Wish It Could be Christmas Everyday” respectively. Slade topped the chart on that Christmas. What makes this a contest is since 2002, the singles chart has been fair game for reality contestants, novelty acts, supergroups, retailers, and charities to vie for publicity and fame. The last of the non-professional acts to become the number one single was in 2015, when the leading pop act, Justin Bieber, asked his fans to vote for a charity instead. The winner was a choir consisting of employees from the Lewisham and Greenwich National Health Service Trust (operators of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the University Hospital in Lewisham). The choir did a number called “A Bridge Over You.” This is a combination of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” and Coldplay’s “Fix You.”

Pop acts almost always win the race to Number One. The Beatles are the only act to have four Christmas Number Ones. They are also the only act to have both the Number One and the Number Two Christmas songs. “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen is the only song to have reached the top spot twice (1975 & 1991). “Mary’s Boy Child” is the only song to reach Number One by different artists (Harry Belafonte and Boney M.). “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” has been Number One for three generations of Band Aid.

Here are two contending acts for this year. First, the Christmas advertisement from John Lewis and Partners called “The Boy and the Piano.”

The second is a group of firefighters from across England who banded together as The Fire Tones to raise money through their charity Christmas single benefitting The Firefighters Charity and The Band Aid Trust.

Have a merry musical Christmas everyone.

Thanks for this post, Dad. Part of what I like about the film Love, Actually is Billy Mack’s (played brilliantly by Bill Nighy) blatant pursuit of a comeback through the Christmas Number One race.

See you all tomorrow for yet another stop on the Virtual Advent Tour!

Happy Tuesday, folks! We’ve reached the final countdown (cue Europe) — the last week before Christmas. If you’re on task, congratulations! Take a well-deserved cocoa break. If you’re behind the eight ball, don’t despair! There’s still time to get things done. Just take one thing at a time.

Our host for today is Jo Kay of Beyond Strange New Words. She shares some of her favorite Christmas movies, all which would make great viewing this week or next.

See you back here tomorrow for yet another stop on the Virtual Advent Tour!