keepin the Yule logs burnin....

It was the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind. It was the Yuletide, and I had come at last to the ancient sea town where my people had dwelt and kept festival in the elder time when festival was forbidden; where also they had commanded their sons to keep festival once every century, that the memory of primal secrets might not be forgotten. Mine were an old people, and were old even when this land was settled three hundred years before. And they were strange, because they had come as dark furtive folk from opiate southern gardens of orchids, and spoken another tongue before they learnt the tongue of the blue-eyed fishers. And now they were scattered, and shared only the rituals of mysteries that none living could understand...
Holy Smokes, what a great christmas i had! I think it'd be no stretch to say that it was my favorite of the 36 that I've experienced thus far, and i hope everyone else had as much fun as I have.

I got a lot of nice things from my immediate family, and my new extended family, but the gift that i liked best is my new xmas stocking. Jen wanted to hang up the stocking she got from her grandmother when she was little, but didn't feel right about hanging hers without having one for me to hang up. She'd been talking for weeks about a "super secret craft project", but i had no idea what that was gonna be.