De-Christmasing

We're finally getting down our Christmas decorations today. We always try to get our trees up by the beginning of Advent (four Sundays before Christmas), and leave them up until Epiphany (Jan 6, the "Twelth Day of Christmas"). The tendency in our culture is to "front-load" Christmas, it seems. All the celebrating and excitement starts at Thanksgiving (at the latest) and ends promptly at bedtime on Dec 25. Heather Marie and I actually prefer to wait a little later for our Christmas-specific festivities, and carry them on longer.

I guess you could say that we tend to celebrate "Old Christmas" more than most.

Planning a hiking trip tomorrow with some friends from college. Maybe I'll be able to get some pictures up from it.