So, to update you on before, we're getting a new toilet. The landlord said he'd install it tomorrow, or "the day after that." Best. Christmas present. Ever. Well, not really.

Ah, Christmas. It's pretty much here. Day after tomorrow. Less than 48 hours. Hump Day. As a kid, Christmas meant one thing: Getting lots of toys that day. Well, it did if you believed Jenny Lou Carson and Eddy Arnold, whoever they are. Or rather, not if you believed them, considering the rest of the lyrics to that song. (And speaking of gifts, read this little story by Uncle Bob. I could sense where it was going, but it still had its desired effect.)

But yes, as a child, Christmas did mean gifts. For me it also meant cookies and bake-offs and holiday TV specials and A Charlie Brown Christmas and the candlelight Christmas Eve church service. My favorite thing, I think, was the decorations. I loved putting up the Christmas lights. I still do, and I still love driving through the neighborhoods and gazing at other houses. Except people have gotten so lazy. It used to be you'd see houses with strings of the large outdoor colored bulbs draped on bushes and in trees, around windows and along the gutters. Then people got into the smaller lights, the indoor/outdoor sets. And there'd be more all-white light displays.

One year, I got the idea to drape the white lights from the edge of the porch so that they'd hang down, almost like ... icicles. A year later, GE was selling them that way. I should sue. Only, I can't prove anything.

Now they make lights in nets ��as in, rather than taking all that labor-intensive time to arrange a string of lights over and around your bushes out front, simply by them in a net and toss them over the shrubs, like you're covering them with a blanket. Bam! Holiday displays in 10 minutes.

I've also seen a lot of houses with lighted wicker reindeer on the lawn, and inflatable Santa, snowman and reindeer statues lining the walkway. Man, that's creative: walk into Sears, buy pre-designed and (in some cases) assembled decorations, spend 20 minutes arranging them on the lawn, go back inside.

Each year I loved helping Dad with the Christmas lights. We'd outline the well by the driveway. We'd decorate the bushes on either side of the steps leading up to the porch, and connect them via a string of lights highlighting the archway over that porch entrance. We used to do the porch in all white lights (which we still do) and the front door in all green, with the two windows on either side in red. Or sometimes, the opposite.

There are some things in life I just prefer remain The Way They Used To Be. Baseball uniforms (no black jerseys), college football powerhouses (Go Irish!), Beatles writing credits (sorry, Paul, but switching to "McCartney/Lennon" is just petty) ... there are a few (very few) areas where I'm conservative. Like Christmas traditions.

Each year, our town lights up a tree in front of the boro hall. On the first Sunday of December, there's a tree lighting ceremony in which the school chorus sings a few holiday tunes (I've been on that end of it), an official or two says a few words, and "Santa" arrives on a fire truck. The tree that was decorated used to be a tall pine right on the corner; a cherry picker was needed to reach the top. Eventually, a new, smaller tree was transplanted to the center of the front lawn, and that became the town's Christmas tree, all right in front of the tall, stately old one, forced into retirement and handed his gold watch.

But this year I noticed that the newer tree stands alone. The old one was cut down recently, a patch of wood chips now covering the circle of ground that served as a natural tree skirt for our tall pine. The replacement has grown up over the years and is now a good deal fuller than the older one was, and it certainly will continue to grow.

It's grown on me. I liked the old, tall tree because, from a certain angles, you could see it from a distance at various points around town, the top of it reaching above the buildings of downtown Little Silver. But the new one is a fine tree, and I look forward to seeing it lit up in years to come.

It may take a while, but new things do grow on me. Christmas isn't the same as it used to be. It's not even the same from one year to the next. But now that has become something of a tradition ��what will Christmas be this year? For the first time since college, I knew I wouldn't be working this year when I got this new job back in August. In past years, I'd have to wait to see what the fall schedule would look like, since I'd use up my few vacation days for other things and would not be high enough on the senority ladder to use my holiday credits on the actual holidays. So I knew I'd be off on Christmas Day, but as of this moment I still don't know if I'm off tomorrow. Or when I'll be getting out tomorrow. But that's fine, too. This will be the first Christmas I spend with Casey (hopefully without the ornaments to designate it as such) and we'll be in Little Silver, since we'll have to work on the 26th. But next year, we'll be heading out to Johnstown for the long weekend. And so begins the yearly Family Shuffle.

Something new every year.