The Christmas Fire
Although the twelve days of Christmas officially ends on January 6th, for most of the Christian world, the dim tail light of Santa's sleigh disappeared off into the night sky ten days earlier. By January 6th, some sweating in the gym at 530am are beginning to doubt that they'll actually learn to play the banjo or be able to do a technical presentation in French or Portuguese by years end. The real twelve days of Christmas is actually about thirty, ignoring the traditional count which begins on Christmas Day. Modern celebration and Christmas cheer hits full stride the week of Thanksgiving with bells ringing and chestnuts roasting. Well, except for those retailers who began hawking their yuletide goods in early October alongside the Halloween stuff. Even the Charlie Brown trees were eighty bucks this year, if you could find one. If you waited more than a week into December to buy a tree, you had slim-pickens or were shelling out some large. Serious fat stacks. In the small to...