Ashley's Occasional Lessons from Life: 'Twas the season to jingle and buyeth silly things

Americans so far have really impressed me with their love of shopping and the effort they are willing to go through to get into the holiday festive. My first month here it was all about shopping for Halloween: the costume, the pumpkins, death reapers riding scooters, and fake spider webs, the candies, the candy containers, so on. Then came November and everyone went nuts for Thanksgiving - the turkey, the food ingredient, and more shopping.

Just when I thought the folks must be still getting over the Black Friday/Cyber Monday hangover, the team are back on the national sport coach, energetic and positive as ever - here comes the Christmas shopping!

My Christmas fantasy has always been to have a 'real' Christmas tree.

I remember when I was very young, my grandparents would used to go chop up a random tree every year from a random hill behind their house, manually carried it back home, and decorated it with all sorts of lovely stuff. Before my cousin Jason was born, I used to be the only kid in the wider family - how everyone went out of their way to spoil me at Christmas time! Those trees did not look like your traditional Xmas trees in movies and cards, and casual tree logging for bratty grandchildren (ha!) would have been banned years ago - but those simple happy times stayed in my memory bank. When I was slightly older my parents bought our first artificial tree (still in operation after all these years - they did make things sturdier back in the days) and I have fond memories of opening up presents and wanting to stay up past midnight. Christmas remains the time of year when you can spoil loved ones without looking excessive and you can do silly things without being judged too much (as everyone else is busy doing their own silly things. Ugly sweaters anyone?).

After I got married, every year Nelson and I talked about getting a real Xmas tree - but for various reasons we never gone ahead and got one (we did get a Xmas penguin though - and his belly lights up at night).

Darjoy the Xmas penguin
back in our Sydney home.
The beachy summer Xmas is now in
another drawer in my memory bank.

Anyway, now we are in New York, new town, new home, new beginning! Real tree it is this year! I was pleasantly surprised to see all these roadside tree shops popping up all over the city. (and they operate 24 hours!)

The one on 7th Ave even has a little shed.
I checked - no elves inside though.

Come get the tree from Santa.

Trees on standby on 5th Ave.

After staring at numerous trees in all sorts of different sizes, I finally picked a tree which I felt a 'connection' with (cue 'the Bachelor' theme music). I thought I would just hand over my cash and bring home the bounty - however the ~~elf~~ dude, possibly on working holidays, had to 'tidy up' the tree before putting the tree in my eager arms.

Your tree will be freshly trimmed
and put through the Xmas funnel.

And then it gets wrapped up in
Xmas fishnet stocking.

And then the elf screws on a
water plate and stand at the bottom
of the tree (I never realize I had to water it)

Viola! now we have a tree ready to be
dressed in love.
p.s. it smells divine.

I was a bit concerned I wouldn't be able to find 'interesting' tree ornaments - how wrong was I. The city is now full of Xmas pop up shops and holiday markets that are overloaded with silly things for the holidays... and more!

Union Square Holiday Market

Chelsea Market Jingle Pop Up Shop

I soon found myself distracted by all the 'if I get someone this, imagine their face when they see this...' goodies.

For the mythical game hunter.

For the keen cyclist who insists on going
for a ride in the winter cold.
(or for the keen bank robber)

For the canine friends who share
their human buddies' hatred/fascination
of Jabba the Hut.

For the special person who already has everything.

For me!
(It has Cyberman and Weeping Angels.
What more could I hope for?)

With all the excitement going on - even Don Don had to come out and soak up the festive atmosphere... (one thing I really like about being in New York is that no one bats an eyelid when I whip out Don Don from my handbag and start propping him in random structures)