nightwraith17 did eight days of Christmas. Me, I decided two was enough. First the 25th, like everyone else has... and then the day after, when we actually open presents.

So. Without further drivel.

December 25th
12:50 a.m.

I finish the chapter of Sorrow and Song that I have been so desperately working on. I started it three weeks ago and life has been just plain unforgiving. I upload it to email, send it to my proof-reader/feedback-giver The Nightwraith, say goodnight to a few online buddies who are staying up as heathenishly late as me, and scat to bed. I need to be up at 7:30.

7:00

The alarm rings. I turn it off, thankful to have another half hour.

7:30

Mercy tells me what time it is. I muster my best "you-will-think-I'm-thoroughly-awake-even-though-I'm-clinging-to-dreamland" voice and tell her that I've got it. She leaves and I sink back to the pillow to catch a few more sweet stolen minutes.

7:52

I drift to semi-consciousness, realize that I'm pushing it and lunge up out of bed without thinking too hard about it, lest my resolve give. Upstairs to where breakfast is cold cereal. I wonder why I woke myself up for this.

8:30

The Christmas service is at 9:30, same time as our morning Sunday service. But on Sundays, I have a kitchen chore... and on Tuesdays, I don't. It's my one "free day" without any chores, and Mercy is the setting table person so she doesn't have any cleanup either, so we lounge around in our room being quite useless, except that Mercy reads the chapter I finished during the midnight hours.

8:50

Peace comes in from washing the dishes and I discover that Clamavi de Profundis has uploaded a rendition of Silent Night. Siblings converge on our room at this point. I chase them out. We watch the 4 1/2 minute long song with about 4 1/2 minutes to spare until 9.

9:00

Time to get in the car. Nobody seems to have much get up and go today. Nonetheless, we're driving down the road at 9:15 which is a shocker.

9:20

Pulling into the church parking lot. It's snowy. The weather was wishy-washy all December, dusting the ground a bit, melting, dusting, melting, and suddenly last Saturday the heavens opened and we got six fluffy inches.

9:30

Service opens with an invocation and hymn. I'm participating in a special performance with four other girls, and bite back pre-performance jitters. Peace is having a harder time. As the service progresses I can see her shifting and glancing to Mercy for moral support.

The prayer ends and it's our turn. Me, Mercy, and Peace get up along with the other two girls, and head to my friend's keyboard which is set up on the side. We practiced several times on Sunday night, but overall this was short notice. It's a beautiful arrangement all the same, and goes off mostly without a hitch, though I forget to come in until about a measure and a half late. Too busy listening to my sister's lovely solo.

The remainder of the service goes on while I have a sudden internal crisis about something I worry I did wrong on social media and I will be unable to fix until we get home.

After the sermon and closing hymn, we chat and fellowship for what probably amounts to over an hour, since when we get in the car it's 11:40.

My appetite is pining for all the Christmas goodies that I'm only going to get tomorrow. I make up my mind to have some of my sisters' and my employee gift from the farm today.

12:15-ish

THE BOOK BOX!

This is my favorite Christmas tradition we have. Every year my mom collects used books from this place or that, puts them in a box, and we open it on Christmas day. This year there are TWO BOXES.

I'm in the seventh heaven. I don't know what to read first. I end up reading through most of lunch, except when I'm cutting the pie.

Yes, the employee gift was two pies. I pull out the blueberry one, the slightly less desirable one, to divide between all the siblings. The cherry pie will be for us farm workers alone. HAHAHA.

One piece of pie goes on each plate. We commence lunch with dessert and move on to ordinary sandwich repast.

I honestly don't know what I do with myself all afternoon. I read mostly. I want to write but I just can't focus which makes me mad because I'm so excited for this chapter.

5:20

I head off to work. At work, nothing particularly of note happens. The pressure hose is broken, and has been for over a week, so I spray the milkers with a less-pressurized hose that suffers from sporadic intervals of even less pressure.

7:00

I come home to discover that there seems to be nothing left of supper. I scrounge around for food. Attempt to write more and fail.

10:20

I go to bed feeling generally useless, and drown my uselessness in the talk-play that Mercy and I are busy with right now. It's a non-canon talk-play, as well as our first talk-play in several months, and involves our characters getting stuck in the real world. Nothing more fun than that.

11:57

I notice the time as I turn the fan on. It takes me probably 20 minutes to get to sleep. Yay.

December 26th

7:00

The alarm goes off. I wonder blearily why on EARTH Mercy would set the alarm. I turn it off and fancy getting another hour of sleep before I go to get my stocking.

Unfortunately, Mercy has other plans. I decide that if she's going to open hers now, she's definitely not doing it without me. We leave Peace, at her request, to catch five more minutes, and run up the stairs.

Sleep-drunk, I head for the living-room and not the dining-room where the stockings are actually hung up. Why? Because three years ago we hung our stockings in the living-room.

No, my brain is not okay.

Alerted by my mother to this discrepancy, I turn around sheepishly and head in the opposite direction.

Stockings are amazing. How long can it possibly take to reach the bottom? I pull out a pad of weekly planner pages, a blank book with dots instead of lines, a gorgeous pen (you didn't know pens could be this pretty), a small square of intense dark sea salt chocolate, two mini metal "mind-benders", a lightweight owl ornament (yes, Peace got one too), a polished rock, a decorative Nutcracker figure, and a candy cane. Note: I have not yet eaten the candy cane.

Feeling rich, I head off to the bagels.

BAGELS AND CREAM CHEESE

I have been anticipating this for weeks. I eat one and a half, and decide to go back to bed. It's 7:20.

9:20

I get up for the second time today. I don't remember falling asleep, but neither do I remember lying awake for two hours, so something must have happened in there. I wake up the computer and catch up on social media, then go upstairs and eat more bagels.

10:15

My mom wants us all upstairs for present opening. I frantically wrap all my siblings' presents at the literally last possible minute.

10:30

I snack on another bagel until my dad is roused, and then we sit in the living-room.

We are opening presents in reverse alphabetical order. Why? Because all the other years we've done it youngest to oldest. Which means yours truly has always been last. Today is a red-letter day for Verity Buchanan. Savor the moment.

I do. I receive a card from my youngest-sister-but-one, The Silmarillion and The Fall of Gondolin, a pair of beautiful blue hair clips which I requested... and, a joint effort between Peace and the twins -- a Legea Coloring Book. This coloring book is practically the highlight of my day. The pictures are by the twins, the captions by Peace.

Oh, and from Constance I get a piece of cardboard with beads glued all over it. It's the spirit of the thing that counts, right? I tell her her beads are lovely, which they are, and tuck the piece of cardboard with a warm and tickled heart with the rest of my gold.

Clean-up from presents follows the hilarity and confusion of opening them. I spend five minutes scraping up tiny pieces of paper off the floor, which my brother had included in one of his gifts as a smoke blind to throw any canny guesses off.

I don't really know what happens after this, or what time it is, or what I do most of the afternoon -- again. The counter is spread with all the Christmas goodies, which I visit now and again during the day when I feel peckish. I pore over the Legea coloring book, peek into my new books, attempt to write -- I do get three paragraphs today, right around the time I need to leave for work.

5:20

I leave for work, about the same time as yesterday. Work is uneventful. I clock out about three minutes later than yesterday.

7:02

I arrive at home. It is another grand Christmas tradition to watch the Lord of the Rings every December, and tonight The Fellowship of the Ring is set up on the TV by the time I get back. I poke around for food, and we get the movie started around 7:30. My mom joins us a few minutes in, but isn't feeling well and leaves after about an hour.

It doesn't get better than watching LOTR with five siblings who have all watched it at least twice before. It just doesn't.

Our running commentary kicks off midway through the prologue with some snarky remarks about the elves' showy battle techniques and how Sauron's appearance can apparently put the entire battle on pause for ten seconds. It devolves rapidly to a most sophisticated discussion of the One Ring as a cellphone and constant substitution of "phone" for "ring" for the next fifteen minutes of the movie. We all agree that Saruman is handsome, to my mother's astonishment and slight consternation. The wizard battle is punctuated by loud groans of annoyance from all parties. My 13-year-old brother does his part by acting as the TV host and expounding the ins and outs of the Force battle between the two Jedi Masters. "Now he's got both lightsabers!"

Somewhere around this part, we end up assigning religious identities to the various villains. Saruman's orcs are Presbyterians, Sauron's are Baptists. The Nazgul are Catholics. Gollum is non-denominational. The One Ring is the Bible. We determine, during Saruman's monologue about Gandalf's fear of Moria, that the Balrog is Martin Luther and the Moria orcs are Lutherans. "Too deep they delved, and woke Martin Luther's doctrine of justification."

All in good fun, Saruman is identified as Calvin, whereupon Gandalf quickly becomes Servetus. This is a source of screaming amusement for quite some time.

We groan over what a wimp Frodo is and assure the world that no, this is not the guy you want carrying the Ring to Mordor. That was a different Frodo, the book Frodo. We count his "seizure" scenes.

Then Frodo ends up in Rivendell, after we scathingly observe all the differences between the book and the movie as regards Weathertop and his injury, and somebody arbitrarily decides, "Yep, he died. He's in heaven now."

Me: "Wait, if the bad guys are all Christians, then Frodo's an atheist and he can't be in heaven."

Someone else: "I guess he's in atheist heaven..."

Me: "Which would be, um, you know."

Boromir comes on screen. Cheers erupt.

Legolas comes on screen two seconds later. The entire room of six people howls to the heavens. "CUTTING IN ON BOROMIR'S SCREEN TIME" "GET OUT OF HERE"

During the Boromir/shards of Narsil scene, the religious game surfaces again and Narsil is labeled as Darwin's "Origin of the Species". This gets some of the most laughs yet.

"The book that struck the death-blow to Christianity! Still scientifically accurate!" *jumps and looks at Aragorn* "But no more than an old book."

The Council of Elrond. "And my axe!" 13-year-old brother steps in to fill my dad's place, since he's gone at a session meeting, with the time-honored remark, "You'll have to get a new one, bozo!"

I have never known a year that my dad did not interject this line when present. It has been entrenched as a canonically accepted line by argument of tradition.

My literal favorite scene in the entire FotR is when Boromir is teaching Merry and Pippin sword-fighting. And it's cut off so soon T_T

Mercy and I spend the Balrog scene discussing how as impressive as this one is, Gothmog must have been worse, as well as observing that this guy's been around for quite awhile. Saw Ungoliant and all that. I also accidentally refer to Boromir as Berethar several times over the course of Moria in general.

I watch Aragorn as Gandalf dies and cry inside thinking about how long he knew Gandalf and what it's like for him to watch his friend die.

We critique the Galadriel-test scene, deciding that she could have been beautiful and terrible in a little less of an obnoxious way. The Boromir-Aragorn scene makes my heart hurt, as always. "Have you ever been called home?" BOROMIIIIIRRRRRR

13-year-old brother starts muttering about how he would like this more if we weren't getting closer and closer to where Boromir dies.

We watch Saruman's goblins scurry around being valets to the Uruk-Hai. I can never help myself from remarking, in the accent of Fergus from Brave, "Look at those lovely flowing locks!"

Boromir's confrontation with Frodo is always enjoyable, especially considering how closely it follows the book. The confrontation with Aragorn, which is NOT in the book, I yawn through. We all urge Frodo to hurry up and run away so that we can watch Aragorn fight orcs. Run, Frodo, run.

Boromir's death. GAH. I HATE THAT ORC. I want to strangle him. I've never wanted to kill anything so much in my life. I have to watch him shoot three stinking arrows while I writhe in absolute agony. If six Buchanans ever got their hands on that orc, there would be blood and mayhem and carnage.

We all howl repeatedly, "DON'T YOU DARE" as he lifts his bow for the fourth time. Aragorn comes in through the trees. We gladly transfer our rage to him and live vicariously for a few glorious moments. I note with pleasure that Legolas actually has a bruise as he comes on the scene. I also note that his eyes are brown this scene, not blue.

The last few moments of the movie go by. That was definitely one of the most delightful three hours of my life.

10:30

We head to bed. We're not done discussing the movie yet by a long shot. We wrangle with this and that for awhile, and topics range from fanfiction to how much this makes me want to write Sorrow and Song. We end up by basically doing one of our old Companies, in which Aragorn ditches Arwen after she tells him he got an 87 on the Ring Temptation test, but Gandalf got a 100%. Elrond found out that Arwen was dating every single eligible male in Middle-Earth, freaked out, confiscated her phone, and made a long-distance call to his wife in Valinor. Celebrian wasn't much help, and Elrond decided that the only course of option was to pack Arwen off to Valinor herself.

11:50

Someone finally suggests that we should probably go to sleep.

This was a grand day.