Before you came there had been no sacrifices for a year.

A belated Merry Christmas to all.

Personally, I had an absolutely wonderful, stress-free holiday owing in no small part to the fact we were pretty much snowed-in. We had a ball sledding down the driveway, building snow forts and snowmen and having snowball fights.

But my favorite part of the holiday besides living in a Rockwell painting was that my kids, no longer believers in Santa, STILL had to wake me up at 5:00 a.m. on Christmas morning because they were excited. This left us a couple of tortured hours to kill waiting for my mom to arrive so we could open presents.

My oldest suggested we read a Christmas story to pass the time. Does she whip out a copy of something by Seuss or Livingston? Hell no. She pulls out her worn copy of Lovecraft and begins reading "The Festival" aloud.

"It was the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind."

We passed the story around, continuing where the last person had left off but at some point we got a little silly and our attempts at making the story sound ominous devolved into cartoon voices.

You may have travelled the world or sky-dived or bungee-jumped but I'm here to tell you that you really haven't lived until you're heard Mickey Mouse read H.P. Lovecraft on Christmas morning.

I hope that y'all had a holiday like mine where I came out on the other end feeling MORE sane. That sort of thing's a rarity.