He brought that macro lens that I had asked for and he brought my husband the 24-in-1 ladder thingamajig that he wanted. There was food and laughter and the chance to spoil our nieces and nephews and Richie’s mom in a way that we wouldn’t usually.

We had the evening to ourselves to enjoy our gifts. I had to take a few pics with the new lens to show my husband what it can do; in the same way he had to take the ridiculously heavy ladder out of its box and demonstrate for me just what its purpose is. I think both of us are glad to have the other ask for a particular gift – I don’t much care what it is or what it does – only that he wants it and wouldn’t buy it for himself. We’re not extravagant people, but at Christmas it’s nice to throw frugality to the wind.

As happy as I am with Santa bringing the macro lens that I wanted, it’s not my favorite gift. Actually, there are two favorites. One, from my husband, is a tree identification guide that he picked out all by himself. I love it because it’s useful and shows that he does sometimes listen to me when I rant about wanting him to help me learn trees. The other favorite, pictured at right, was made by my brother Brian and is a model of our church. He made it entirely from cardboard to look like the village buidlings that surrounded the train set we had as kids. My SIL had been telling me for weeks that Brian was making me something, so I didn’t know what in the world to expect. I never would have expected this.

Anyone want to share what their favorite gift was, expected or otherwise?

“Thus the beginnings of a solemn festival of peace and hope and understanding in which nations the world over join this week. A festival of life newborn when the year is at its nadir, of faith and hope in the midst of Winter dark. A festival of lights and greens and gifts and prayers, for its symbols and its ceremonies are many and diverse among the nations. But everywhere a festival of peace and goodwill, vigorous and verdant as the greens we gather now.” – Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons

“December is the year in age and wisdom, a woman with starlight in her frosted hair and a snowflake on her cheek and a sprig of holly on her coat. The light in her blue eyes is young as this morning and old as time. She has known youth and love and age and heartbreak, and she still can smile, knowing that life is not all of either. She is December, which is a kind of summation not only of one year but of all years’ ending.

For December is bare trees and the evergreens, it is rustling weed stem in the ruthless wind and a partridgeberry on the hillside. It is ground pine, older than the hills where it grows, and it is a seedling maple from two years ago clinging to one last scarlet leaf. It is a stiff-tailed young squirrel scrambling up an oak tree, and it is a mask-faced coon in the moonlit cornfield, listening for the hounds. It is ice on the pond and lichen on the rock and a flock of chickadees in the pine thicket.

December is a blizzard in Wyoming and a gale on the Lakes and the Berkshires frosted like a plate of cupcakes. It’s fir trees going to the cities by the truckload, and red ribbon by the mile and tinsel everywhere. It’s so many days till You-Know-When. It’s the Winter solstice and the shortest day, and it’s a snow shovel and galoshes and a muffler round the neck. It’s 30 below in Medicine Hat.

December is the hungry owl and the fugitive rabbit, the woodchuck abed and the crow all alone in the pasture. It’s soup in the kettle and a log in the fireplace and long wool socks. It’s a wind at the door and a whisper in the air and a hush on the evening when the carols are sung. It’s the wonder and the glory, and the Nativity.” -Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons

“November is the aging year, a woman whose Springtime children have grown and gone their way but whose hair is often spangled, whose gray eyes are often alight, and whose dress of grays and browns is neither dour nor dowdy. November is berry-bright and firelight-gay, a glittering night, a crisp blue day, a whispering wind and a handful of determined fence row asters.

November is the little hemlock in a green lace party dress, and a clean-limbed gray birch laughing in the wind. November is apple cider with champagne beads of authority; it is a gray squirrel in the limber top of the hickory tree, graceful as the wind; it is a doe and her fawn munching winesap windfalls in the moonlit orchard. It is a handful of snowflakes flung over a Berkshire hilltop, and a woodchuck sniffing the wind and retreating to his den to sleep till April.

November is a rabbit hound baying the hillside; a farm boy in a canvas coat and a red cap, the 16-gauge in the crook of his arm, on the hills of the upper pasture; a grouse bursting from underfoot with a roar of wings and rocketing into the thicket. It is hog butchering and cracklings and sage and pepper and fresh sausage. It is a fox barking in the starlight and an owl in the old dead popple asking midnight questions. It is high-heaped firewood and leaf-banked walls and buckwheat cakes for breakfast.

And November is the memory of the years. It is turkey in the oven, and plum pudding and mince pie and pumpkin and creamed onions and mashed yellow turnip. It is a feast and celebration; but is is also the remembering and the Thank You, God, and the understanding. That’s the heart of it: November’s maturing and understanding.” –Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons