(A Few) of My Favorite Yuletide Things

 Not my real house...wait, can they do that??

 By the time I arrive home in Maine tomorrow evening, it will have been the longest I’ve ever been away. Considering I spent a semester abroad in Denmark, and now live only a short flight down the east coast, this is quite impressive.

If by impressive I mean, unbearable. I miss home.

As my anticipation for Maine and the holidays mounts (along with my homesickness), I’ve relied on some of my favorite things to get me through those Christmas blues and keep the spirit of a Maine Christmas alive here in the city. (Sure, we have the tree at Rockefeller Center, the Nutcracker by the New York City Ballet, and one of the largest Santa-suit pub crawls in the world…but do we have Christmas trees made entirely of lobster pots?? Um, no. No we do not). 

So in celebration of heading north tomorrow, and to get me through one.more.day, here are a few of my favorite Yuletide things!

My favorite Christmas scarf (courtesy of my brother, Ian): It's super cozy and gives my usual black-on-black NYC uniform a pop of festive color. I've worn it every day since Thanksgiving...er, Halloween...er, okay fine, Labor Day.

Good Maine Folks: The Down East "Maine For the Holidays" issue arrived just before Thanksgiving. I cried. Check out the aforementioned lobster pot Christmas tree.

Snowflake Bentley Christmas ornaments: We started collecting these as a family years ago, and now we all have them on our own trees. They come out with a new one every year, and they remind me of colder, cleaner climes. (Read more about Snowflake Bentley here — pretty sure we were separated at birth!)

My pup, Tucker: He loves Christmas and snow as much as we do. Lucky for me, he's also my mom's favorite photo-bombing subject, so I get constant puppy pics no matter where I am!

Christmas Shows: I know I know, this isn't specifically a Maine thing...but I like to keep my holiday calendar booked with Christmas shows and festivities (here, Carnegie Hall for the Vienna Boys Choir) to keep the spirit alive, no matter how bust the season!

The Hunt

My dad is an expert at many things: fixing things, making things grow, building a fire, and inserting a good pun into any conversation. (Many a dinner conversation has been interrupted by a "beet's me!" exclamation over my favorite roasted vegetable.)


He is also an expert at finding that elusive object that we only search for once a year, but which we remember for years to come (or, if you're me, and may or may not also be Santa's daughter — not sure how that works — FOREVER): the perfect Christmas tree.


We always give my dad a hard time for being, to put it lightly, a man of few words. I remember studying vocabulary flash cards for the GRE, and coming across the word "laconic."

laconic: (adj) using or involving the use of a minimum of words; concise to the point of seeming rude or mysterious.

From that point on, it was an easy word to remember (and did, incidentally, end up being on the test). I just thought of my dad.


In our family, we know that his demeanor is not a matter of rudeness or mystery, but rather an efficiency that is best described as precision. The man knows what he wants, and doesn't have a whole lot else to say about it.

Kevin "Kev" London: Professional Christmas Tree Spotter

So our hunt for a Christmas tree was always, perhaps, different from some other families'. Rather than the long, drawn-out, hot-chocolate-infused afternoon spent wandering around the tree farm, our search consisted of pulling up to one of the tree stands by our house, walking once up each aisle (if not just the front row), and then dad choosing the very first tree that he saw — undoubtedly spotted out the window even as he pulled in.


We're talking 10 minutes, tops, from start to finish. He didn't hunt; he purchased.


And yet, we always ended up with the most perfect tree on the lot.

Hark! A tree!

You would think that, living in Manhattan, the hunt for our Christmas tree would be very different from my childhood searches at home in Maine. In fact, it's very similar (if not more expensive). This city — with its lights, crazy cab drivers, and unpredictable pricing scheme on everything from coffee to Christmas trees — all but demands efficiency, a skill that I acquired from my dad and his uncanny ability to make the best decision, on-the-spot, every time.  


So last week, Ben and I met after work, walked over to the closest tree stand to our apartment (only one block away this year!) and chose the very first tree we saw. 


As always, it was the most perfect one on the lot. 

A very merry NYC Christmas to you!