My brother and I are still up doing a little last minute wrapping and baking, in an interesting twist on days of old. We sent my parents off to bed a while ago and told them that if they fell asleep soon, Santa will have come by the time they wake up.

Today has been a moderately relaxed and exceedingly pleasant sort of Christmas Eve. I created whole forests of gingerbread trees and swathes of sour cream spritzers. We avoided making egg nog, to the relief of all concerned. The presents are mostly wrapped and stashed under our truly enormous tree (which was $14! I sometimes forget that the rest of the world is not Manhattan), and soon I’ll scamper off to bed. The Nutcracker was on PBS earlier so I’m sure the sugar plum fairies are inevitable, at this point. Ho.