I know that my great grandmother (we called her GGma) loved Christmas and Bing Crosby. She had two trees--one downstairs and one up--which her grandkids would sleep under one night during the holiday season, and I'm told that the tradition of looking for Santa on Christmas Eve began at her house.

There was once a young girl who was the daughter of a salesman and a seamstress. Her father traveled often, so the girl spent most of her days playing or reading in the corner of the dressmaker's shop while her mother worked. Each morning, just before dawn, the girl and her mother would ride the bus into town. Most of the time, the girl napped, her head leaning against the window. But during the Christmas season, she loved to look at all of the decorated store fronts as they drove past. Each day, the square had a few more decorations--first the lights, then the garland, the figurines, the bows--until every window and every light post was devoted to the season.

We had a date planned for Thursday night to make pizza, sip wine, and watch a Christmas movie while putting up our holiday decorations. Then life happened in the form of resume deadlines and networking phone calls for him, and a giant, un-mendable hole in the pizza dough for me. At nine, we ordered a pizza with only sauce and topped it ourselves, watched an episode of House of Cards, and postponed the decorating until Sunday.