1. Wrapping. Trying to express (ideally) in the wrapping materials, including tape, card and ribbon, the personality of the addressee and the nature of the gift inside. Gifts are for New Year – I don’t celebrate religious holidays.

2. Real tree – when my son was little. Together with the smell of clementines (traditional decoration, along with walnuts wrapped in golden foil), the smell of the evergreens is the essence of the holiday. Now I sometimes make arrangements of branches with good candles and a table centerpiece for New Year supper.

5. Glintwein instead

10. A Christmas Story. Never fails to send me ROFL.

12. Every year – a new dish on the table (among tried and true), to symbolize openness with new things that come to us with New Year.

16. Nothing annoying, everything’s terrific: I don’t shop for presents and the tree with the mobs, I start the day after Xmas, when the streets and stores are mine for taking and the salespeople are most agreeable. And the New Year’s night is the most beautiful holiday of the year – what’s to not like?

2. Real tree. Gotta have that smell and feel.

3. But evidently I don’t have to have it that much, because I’ve never set up a tree on my own. If I did it would be a couple of weeks before Xmas.

4. Shortly after New Year’s; might wait ’til Epiphany but probably not.

5. Dunno, never tasted a drop of it in my life.

6. One year I seriously cashed in and got a whole bunch of cool stuff. The only thing I specifically remember now was a microscope, which came with various pre-loaded slides of critters to look at.

7. No. Liked the one we had when I was growing up. We didn’t do Advent candles, presumably as a symptom of Protestantism. I think I’d actually enjoy them now. There were, however, Advent calendars with little thingies that opened up for each date. Those were fun.

8. Wasn’t fond of getting clothes as a kid. Most of my relatives were broke and had questionable taste, besides, so clothing gifts tended to be worse than usual.

9. Mail. Back in the day when I maintained a list there were at least a hundred people on it. Haven’t sent any out the past few years, I’m afraid. I don’t feel that substituting e-mails is acceptable. Possibly a PDF of a really creative original/custom design.

10. Oh, something way out there like A Midnight Clear. If TV is included, A Charlie Brown Christmas wins by a mile.

11. No set pattern. I haven’t done much specifically for a few years now and tend toward gift certificates or the creative sorts of things one can get through, say, World Vision, eg livestock or well-drilling somewhere in the Third World, donated in the name of the “recipient.” Everybody I know, myself certainly included, has way too much stuff anyway.

12. Pretty much Thanksgiving minus the cranberry sauce: turkey, dressing (wish I’d gotten my father’s recipe before he passed away), mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes with butter, green beans, pumpkin pie, whipped cream.

13. Colored lights, and I applaud the trend toward LEDs.

14. Travel. I have one known relative in KC and one in Springfield, MO; the largest concentration are in Jacksonville Beach, FL, to which I am in transit as I compose this.

15. Christmas morning. Christmas Eve is for a candlelight service.

16. The fact, evident from several of my answers above, that I am generally unprepared to participate in a way that directly expresses how much I value my family and friends.