December Is an Alternate Universe

December 13, 2010 – In a previous post, I mentioned the idea of Christmas and other holidays as reality-changers. At the time, I just needed the idea to exit an article (articles are a lot like emergency situations...the faster you find the exit, the safer you are). It's an idea that probably deserves more attention, but if so, it's by people better at stringing together consecutive minutes of internal focus than I. My DVR is overbooked for the night, so I have to catch Michael Jackson and Bubbles in real-time on Animal Planet.

So instead of trying to get all philosophical about the way candy canes and red-nosed reindeer make us want to be generous to strangers and spend time with family (even more than the baby Jesus does, I'd seriously offer), I'll just mention that there is suddenly a 7.5-foot tree in my living room, every other object in my house glows with an internal red, green, or white light, and everything with a head seems to be wearing these weird floppy red hats with the bulbous white ends. December is just an alternate universe. Here's some proof from my house:

Speaking of alternate universes, my plan for this diorama is
that eventually it will feature every single Christmas character.
That'll be the best Christmas ever.

So...this is Christmas.