Festive Cheer

I love Christmas. I find the long dark winter so long, dark and wintery that a festival of lights and excess brings me immense joy.  It's not a religious thing, it's a human thing. Give me food, give me music, give me parties and sparkly things, because it is cold and dark and it's going to be cold and dark for a few months' yet... 
So I love the way people decorate their houses here, tacky though it is, I love how our street shines and glows, and I love the Christmas tree and I love a few days of holiday music, and frankly, I'm having a very nice week. I've got a lot of marking to do, so I'm busy and that means I've missed things like today's the zoo trip which makes me incredibly sad. But there are some moments that I got to witness, and Ben seeing the tree for the first time one morning was pretty wonderful. I wish I could have got the first reaction on film, but I was too busy being overloaded with maternal adoration to go and get the camera for quite some time.