For Christmas, I am requesting the ability to FREEZE TIME.

We got our tree. We've been using this one specific tree lot for the past few years, not so much because the trees are better or cheaper, but because this place really puts on a show. The lot looks just like the one from A Christmas Story, right down to the colored lights stranded around barbed wire.

It's a pretty perfect place. Since it's actually a mom & pop home and garden center that alternates themes with the passing seasons, there's more to it than just a few rows of trees. For one, there's a speaker system circling the lot, so as you're waddling through the tree aisles, you're serenaded by Wham and Paul McCartney. For two, they sell a lot more than just Christmas trees. Tons of wreaths, light-up lawn inflatables, reindeer-shaped wooden mailboxes and so forth...the kind of stuff you wouldn't buy, but love looking at.

For three, they gave out free cups of apple cider.

It was surreal. Between the music blaring and the warmly dressed cashier inviting us to have some apple cider, I had the strangest sense that I'd become trapped in a low-budget made-for-television Christmas movie. Clearly our salesperson/cider supplier was about to lull us into false faith with promises of big tree discounts, before pitching some kind of harebrained investment scheme where we pay 500 bucks to back her brother-in-law's "oil substitute," and ultimately discover the true meaning of Christmas by way of being broke. Anyway, the cider was excellent.

That's our tree. Our tree isn't very photogenic, but I promise, it's a handsome tree. I'm not sure if it's $48 worth of handsome, but that's what we paid. Currently, the $48 Christmas tree is laying sideways on our living room floor, still netted. This situation will be remedied soon, but even in this sad state, the tree still managed to overtake the toxic air of our apartment with the sweet scent of Christmas pine. And not that bullshit pine-in-a-can stuff, either. The real kind. The kind that makes you inhale more deeply than you ever thought you could, seemingly by reflex.

I'm not sure if we'll even have time to decorate the tree tomorrow, but at least it's here. There is no sight finer than a tree covered in Christmas crap, but even naked, it's prettier than yo momma.

I'm a candy cane traditionalist, but it's hard to resist some of the brand name candy-brand candy canes that have arrived in recent years. (Brand name candy-brand candy canes? I may want to edit that description. If I don't, it means I haven't proofread this before publishing. In which case...shit.)

There are candy canes based on everything from Sprees to Starburst, but I can't say that I'm a huge fan of how they look on trees. These "specialty" canes often come in nontraditional candy cane colors, like, for example, ORANGE. I can't wrap my head around orange candy canes and purple candy canes and other such atrocities, because I am a fallen human being and this is what life has come to for me. Still, even from a purely artistic perspective, white and red stripes will always contrast better against forest green than fucking orange and purple.

I forgot where I was going with this. Thank God for photos. Bubblicious Candy Canes might not be new, but I've certainly never seen them before. Though they seem pretty typical at first, a closer inspection reveals the hidden surprise that makes them worth all these many paragraphs: They are candy canes with gum inside!

It's true! As you suck the gum-flavored candy cane down to nothingness, an inner cylinder (well, a cylinder with a big curve at the end) made of sweet, chewy Bubblicious bubble gum is revealed! It's good gum, too. The canes' moistness and sugar seems to seep into the gum, transforming it from normal Bubblicious into that weird gum paste stuff that Bazooka used to sell in tubes. If you know what I'm talking about, you realize why this is special.

I was going to write more, but...bed. Merry Christmas!