I used to host Christmas dinner every year, until my brother-in-law George began to lose his eyesight and couldn't make the drive from Fort Collins any more. Back then I would always put up my Christmas tree to make the place look at least a little bit more festive. In fact, when I was a kid back in the south side Chicago Brainerd neighborhood, I used to love sitting in the chair and looking at the tree all lite up with lights, as seen in the above photograph. And now once again I will be hosting Christmas dinner, and that tree is buried somewhere in my storage locker, behind years of floatsum and jetsum. Do I go in there, finally clean the place up at the risk of serious back injury, find and put up the tree, or just skip it this year? To put it in terms of a Victorian Christmas, do I want to be Old Fezziwig, who always knew how to celebrate Christmas, or maintain my usual role as Scrooge? As Jack Benny once said when approached by a thief who told him "your money or your life," I'm thinking, I'm thinking.
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