Decorating for Christmas is not the event it was in Harmony. No trudging out into the back forty to choose a spindly funny-looker for the living room, no loud boys working to cram every single available ornament onto every single sagging bough. No, these days, it's just me at the grocery store, picking out a little guy and paying too much money for him; then setting him in a corner and dolling him up with a few sentimental ornaments while T eats lunch and lets me have my way.

As a result: voila: the traditional tree, topped with the paper Elvis Santa that Tom made for our very first tree together in 1986, scattered with early-1960s styrofoam gingerbread men from my parents' first tree, featuring famous ornaments such as Tin Foil Man (made by a co-worker's little boy in the early 1990s) and a rubber King Kong (T purchased it for me at the top of the Empire State Building in his courting days).

And on the mantle, the festive Holiday Rodents, and their pal, Wobbly Reindeer.

Across the street, the neighbors have strung lights along their fence and into their crabapple tree. And beyond, dangling from a giant maple, hangs the Orb, a ball of red and gold lights, which from the vantage of our front window, glows like a UFO against the the Congregational church's steeple. It's fine and silly display, and I am very fond of it.

And thus the Christmas season commences in the little northern city by the sea . . . a long rainy night, a shimmering Orb, and Elvis.