Christmas silently arrives in my home

It's December and all around the house, little decorations are sprouting like mushrooms after a spring rain. Only these are much more colorful than mushrooms. An elf in a red jacket and striped tights sits on the living room bookcase. A pair of angels are roosting on the mantel. Carved Santa statuettes are atop the TV cabinet. A picture of my dad days before his last Christmas, wearing a Santa cap and a red scarf at the nursing home, is on the end table. A spray of mistletoe hangs in the archway. The plain, everyday sofa pillows have been replaced by pillows with bright snow themes, evergreens and reds. A collage frame of photos from Christmases past has replaced the Currier and Ives print on the wall. A collection of Christmas-themed books lies on every table or trunk lid. A spray of greenery tops the bathroom mirror. A sleigh bell hangs from a doorknob. Christmas mugs have replaced the everyday kind as we drink our coffee in the morning. Christmas china sets the table.

The Great Decorating has begun, appearing almost magically as my wife scurries silently through the house, knickknacks in hand, looking for the right spot to plant her trove. Every room has something that says "Christmas." It's a two-week project, accomplished in stolen moments between dinner and bedtime or between awaking and heading to work. And this does not include the big project of erecting and decorating the Fraser fir in its corner spot.

For 11 months, give or take, these mementos have lain hibernating in a half-dozen plastic bins in the attic. The most obvious signs of the transformation of our house are those big bins sitting at the foot of the attic stairs waiting to be emptied or, having been refilled with all the nomenclature of the rest of the year, waiting to go back in the attic until Epiphany, when the undecorating will take place, and Christmas' symbols will go back into the bins and back into the attic.

For the next few weeks, our house will hum with the look of a 1950s department store window — Christmas everywhere you look. Christmas music, both sacred and secular from a collection of hundreds of songs, will waft from the stereo speakers. The smell of wassail and evergreen boughs will warm the house against the winter chill. Lights from windows, trees and railings will fight against the lengthening darkness.

My wife does this not so much for the two of us, the only occupants of this Winter Wonderland, but for the children and grandchildren who will spend little time here, if any at all, and for the neighbors and friends we invite to share our holiday excitement for a few hours on one dark night. It is a tactic for opposing the gloom of darkest winter, the lack of solar warmth and the drabness of a landscape without the bright leaves and flowers that cheer us the rest of the year. If the outdoors have turned dark and colorless, she will make the indoors as bright and colorful as she possibly can.

Christmas has come to my home, and I hope to yours as well.