While driving to the store the other day, a thought occurred to me. Given that Catholicism is really into the Virgin Mary (bit of an understatement, I know), why aren’t there more Christmas songs about her, for her, to her?

I know Ave Maria is popular during this time of year, but that’s about the only song I can think of. Are there others I don’t know about?

I’m not saying we need more, please, don’t misunderstand me, just a simple observation.

I mean, aside from Mary in the nativity scene there’s not even a lot of Christmas chotchkies with her depiction, no Santa and Mary, nothing. I’m thinking that Mary Christmas chotchkies could be the next form of Indulgences that the Catholic Church could get behind. See what I did there, Mary Christmas instead of Merry Christmas? This could even be the gold mine the church needs to pay off the abuse lawsuits. Just a thought.

It is official, the Christmas tree is up, along with all our other decorations. We were not planning on decorating yesterday, it just kind of happened. We usually wait until the weekend after Thanksgiving to pull out the decorations, but something got into us and we went for it. So the garland is up, the tree is lit and the furniture is moved. It always seem like a challenge each year to figure out how we moved and arranged the furniture the year before. I think we’ve finally hit on a configuration we like.

The whole thing started when I said I wanted to go down and check out the Christmas tree at Fashion Island in Newport. We knew that would just make us sad if we didn’t have our tree up already, so Fashion Island got moved to this coming weekend and our tree went up yesterday along side our traditional media fare of Home Alone and The Santa Clause. I have to say, every year I look forward to that little Kevin McCallister foiling Marv and Harry’s plans to burglarize his house. He’s so smart for an eight-year-old.

So, as if over twenty-four hours of Christmas music was not enough for Christmas listening enjoyment, XM now has all of their Christmas stations going in full effect. They have all the sub-genres covered from your traditional carols to the novelty to the normal everyday Christmas music from artists like Mannheim Steamroller, Kenny G, and Mariah Carey. It’s nice to have choices, choices are good, it’s like an auditory 31 Flavors.

The Book will be finished this week, we are so close. The excitement is building, we’re trying to figure out how to celebrate. To me a celebration seems premature, even if it is well deserved, it’s still premature. Technically, I don’t have a book yet, I have a manuscript that really, really hopes to grow up and become a book. I’m guessing that the road to bookdom, yes I just made that word up, may be arduous. But it does speak to some accomplishment and for that I should be happy. So maybe we’ll go grab a slice at The Costco, celebrate small, because even the small accomplishments deserve to be celebrated.