The Hawthorne Christmas Tree.

After saying goodbye to Mama Hawthorne

and getting back from Danville last week,

I surprisingly found out very soon that I needed to literally hurl myself into Christmas. Traditions suddenly became extremely important and vital. I wanted to wrap the warmth of my family around me. The second day home, The Mister and I were out running errands, we passed a Christmas tree lot, and I, of all people, demanded we go in and buy a tree, right then and there. Mr. Hawthorne was, I think, a bit taken aback by my abruptness and anxiousness in immediately procuring a tree, but he knows me so he acquiesced. We've never bought a tree this early. We got a nice 10-footer to go in our "Occasional Room." It's like a castle turret (to me, but I'm delusional), and I celebrate numerous and varied Occasions in it. Niece Xmaskatie was kind enough to come last weekend for a visit. She helped me rearrange our living area, and helped me decorate our tree. Thanks again, Xmaskatie. I needed that. Anyways, we decorated a beautimous tree. And about 3 days later, the tree took a nose dive while I was in the Frenzy of Christmas Marathon Baking. Mr. Hawthorne and I propped it up that night and he tied it, but it wasn't until another 3 days later that we worked on the totally askew lights. There was no way I was going to untangle all those lights, so I just started at the bottom (because I can't reach the top and small step stools, ladders and gravity ARE the EVUL to me), and I poked all the wires back to the center of the tree, rearranged, pushed, prodded, pried apart. etc It was a lot of hard work. So here's tonight's first video of the tree. Here's tonight's second video. And here's tonight's third video.