When it's time to decorate the tree, you must be in your long underwear.
Even if you've been dressed for and hour or two already, you must undress, leaving your clothes in a neat pile, while you dig (literally) into the Christmas ornament box. This decorating thing may take some time, because there are all those ornaments to exclaim over, to re-tell stories about, to figure out which branch, exactly,they will look best hanging from. Then you might get distracted altogether from the decorating job and start playing with all the angels and the sled, because wouldn't angels like to go sledding? And there's the fake snow - that fluffy stuff, like what's inside pillows - and you pull it apart and drape it all over the branches, and it really does look like snow. While you're doing all this, you keep hiking up your drawers, because they keep falling down, since your jeans, which usually hold them up pretty well, are sitting in that neat pile on the floor. After a while, you take a bit of a break from the decorating to eat your first candy cane of the season, which tastes just like your first candy cane of last Christmas season, only better. And you just can't help all that grinning that keeps happening from the inside out.
Because all this?
It's just the beginning.
