Christmas inventory

• Playing of Messiah: several times on CD, several times (extracts) live, courtesy of the Family Chamber Consort, known far and wide for their enthusiasm, and perhaps someday to be known far and wide for their skill.
• Crackling wood fire: one. ... Well, okay, it was on TV: the local cable channel broadcast a video of a fire with stockings hanging beside it.
• Christmas crackers: eight. Five for us, and three for the girls down the street who shovelled our driveway while we were eating dinner.
• Jokes in the Christmas crackers: 48, including the ones in French and Spanish.
• Funny jokes in the Christmas crackers: zero.
• but!!! paper crowns that fit: all of them, pretty much--a first, since most of us have enormous noggins.
• Loaves of banana bread made to give to various aunts and church members: twelve.
• Loaves of banana bread that came out of the pan intact: three.
• Standard-issue Christmas trees: zero. We didn't bother to get a cut-down evergreen this year, opting instead to load as many ornaments as possible onto my parents little potted fig tree. It actually looked entirely charming.
• Family members: five.
• Healthy family members: one. (What with my mother's chronic sinus infection and my brother's resurgent malaria and such like, I was the only really able-bodied one in the house today.)
• Family members that joined the family in the past three years: one. (Begüm, my parents' former exchange student from Turkey, is their new daughter. My parents have taught her a lot of English, with the result that she is constantly convulsing me by using one of my father's characteristic expressions with his exact intonation. She's going to school in Canada now, and this is the third Christmas she's spent with my family. Since this is only her third Christmas ever (she's a good Muslim herself), she's endearingly enthusiastic about decorating the Christmas (fig) tree and opening presents...I had to scold her several times for trying to peek under the wrapping paper of the gifts that were under the tree.)
• Amount of food eaten: too much.
• Number of dishes washed: ten thousand (approximately).
• Amount of love present: incalculable.