The Lights Are Up

[Geoffrey]

You heathens clearly don't worship the EGG.

I will be showing my piety by placing the traditional egg on its stand flanked by d20s at the altar. All I need now are human sacrifices.

We are part of the Flying Klaws cult:
http://home.insightbb.com/~kinesys/love ... istmas.htm

[T. Foster]

Probably worth revisiting this old blog post from Jon Peterson, a letter Gary Gygax wrote to the IFW Monthly newsletter in 1969 explaining why he didn't celebrate Christmas (based on his beliefs as a Jehovah's Witness). Happy Saturnalia!

[Melan]

Classic Gary!

[francisca]

we put up our trees the saturday after thanksgiving.

We put one tree up in the family room, which the kids decorate with the ornaments they have gotten every year from my mom and dad. we also setup my old HO model train around this tree.

We do a second tree in the front room, with more traditional ornaments (most of the kids' stuff is star wars ships, etc..), including some that were hand made in the 40's by my grandmother. This is the tree the presents go around.

And...my wife has about 50 snowmen made of various material that go around the house.

If I get motivated, I may put some lights up outside the house this weekend.

[gizmomathboy]

So far we've put up lights around our porch and some large ornaments.

We go to a tree farm to get a tree. However, the tree farm we usually go to might not be selling this year so we might have to find a new one to go to.

We usually get a balsa or frazier fir. I like blue spruce but my spouse hates it because the needles are very stiff and quite pokey. Need gloves to decorate them.

[Welleran]

My wife (with help this year) did our standard Friday after Thanksgiving setup. Three trees, lots of house decor, and lights front and back. Lot of work but always looks great.

[bobjester]

I have the boxes with the Christmas decorations out of the closet. That may be as close to getting in the Christmas spirit I will get this year.

Also dreading putting it up, in morbid anticipation and anxiety from the expectation that as soon as I do, the cat will perform a running tackle on it and knock it all down.

Like he did with the newly hung drapes last week. Bastard.

[TRP]

Exterior lights are up. The real tree is in the stand, and it will get decorated tomorrow when our youngest comes by to assist. There'll be adult beverages and some kind of sweet treats for the mini celebration.

Growing up, we didn't get our trees until about a week before Christmas. Now, if you wait that long, all that's left are pathetic looking Charlie Brown trees. I prefer going the later over the earlier route, but I wouldn't be a good hunter if I brought home a skrawny kill.

The tree comes down on Kings Day, and we'll get our first king cake of the season then too.

Oh, and now they're selling king cakes prior to Thanksgiving. Disgusting.

[Flambeaux]

Oh, and now they're selling king cakes prior to Thanksgiving. Disgusting.

Oy! How horrid!

We'll get our tree in a couple of weeks and keep it up until at least 13 January. If it's still in good shape, it often stays up until after 2 February (Candlemas/Presentation). We tried a cut-your-own place near here a few years back but the pines were very sad. We have some acquaintances through a parish we used to be part of who have a Christmas tree farm in the family. They get fresh fir trees cut and delivered within 48 hours. We order them around Thanksgiving.

Last year's tree was fine with periodic watering until mid-February/early March.

We'll keep the "harvest season" decorations up for another week or so until we get and decorate the tree.

I've never hung lights outside because we have no exterior power outlets.

[T. Foster]

We never had king cake as a tradition so I never encountered it until a few years ago with my in-laws. I think of it as “choking-hazard cake”

[bobjester]

We never had king cake as a tradition so I never encountered it until a few years ago with my in-laws. I think of it as “choking-hazard cake”

That makes me a complete heathen by comparison. I've never heard of it until this thread.

[EOTB]

I hadn't either

[Flambeaux]

I know Whole Foods distributes king cakes regionally here in North Texas between January and Mardi Gras, but I don't know how widespread that is.

It was, growing up in New Orleans, the herald of the Carnival Season which technically begins with Epiphany (6 January) and ends with the first stroke of midnight on Ash Wednesday (moveable, depending on the date of Easter). Someone would bring a cake to class when we returned from the Christmas holiday and everyone would get a slice. Whomever got the baby in the cake then had to bring the cake next week. And on it would go, each week, until we began the Mardi Gras holiday when the whole city would shut down, more or less, between the Friday before Ash Wednesday and the Thursday following Ash Wednesday.

Even Bourbon Street used to be mostly closed on Ash Wedesday, although I expect these days it still runs as usual.

These days, it's usually some variant of a cinnamon roll covered with the icing sugars containing a plastic baby. Historically, it was a brioche with a bean or coin inside. A proper brioche is a very rich bread containing eggs. Under the strict laws of fasting during Lent, meats, eggs, dairy, oil, and wine can't be consumed so brioche, and a bunch of other things, was off the menu.

Since many of those foods expire in an era before refrigeration, and Lent used to be a communal observance, the Carnival season developed as a custom in most of Western Christendom. King Cake and the Mardi Gras in places like New Orleans and Mobile, are the last vestige of that phenomenon. It's, essentially, the same origin as Venetian Carnevale and the Engllish eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.

[ghendar]

I grew up with real Christmas trees, and always enjoyed the smell and such. When I started my own family I continued the tradition of using real trees at Christmas, but a few years ago I caved in and went with an artificial tree. Definitely easier to deal with, but I still feel oddly guilty for abandoning the tradition.

When I got married and my daughter was born we switched to a fake tree but a couple years ago went back to real. I'm never going back to fake if I can help it. There's nothing like a real tree

[ghendar]

That's early! (According to local custom, we put ours up on December 24 and remove it on January 6.)

It used to be that way in America, too. According to at least one tradition, the children would wake on Christmas day to see the tree for the first time (Santa Claus brings it). Now, thanks to consumerism, the “Christmas season,” with all its trees and music and TV movies, effectively leads up to Christmas day and promptly ends.

I'm glad that's a tradition no longer in place. Can't imagine putting the tree up on the 24th. However, I have seen people take down their tree and put it on the curb on the 26th.

As far as keeping it fresh, we always cut our own. That helps a lot. The place we get it from gives us a packet that you put in the stand that's supposed to help keep the tree fresh. Don't know if it really works but they give it to us free so I throw it in there