Dreaming of an Orange Christmas

You, too, can have an Orange Christmas. Here's how:

Procrastinate on all phases of holiday preparation. Put off shopping for gifts and sending out cards, but accomplish these duties just in the knick of time. Get that Christmas tree up and decorated no sooner than December 18, dress the kid in Santa jammies, and take a picture of him to enclose in the cards. (Procrastination is the Orange way, but so is pulling things off just ahead of the final deadline.)

Grow tired of your handful of Christmas CDs and order a new one that arrives on December 23. I recommend the jazzy remastered Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas. Sure, I already own the previous version (with fewer songs), but I appear to have misplaced it and totally forgot I owned it. Just found out this minute when grabbing that Amazon link. (I just looked on the shelf again and lo and behold, there's the old Ella CD. Hey, instant gift!) Anyway, who's better than Ella Fitzgerald? Nobody, that's who. And I can listen to it while wrapping presents...just as soon as I get around to starting on that.

Order yourself some loot and tell your significant other to wrap it up and give it to you on Christmas. I have good reason to believe Mr. Tangerine is giving me two fleece V-necks and a warm pair of Merrell clogs (they felt great in the shoe store!) this year. Somehow, he is perturbed by the convenience of this system. He feels guilty that I have gone shopping to buy things for him...and yet, this guilt has not motivated him to hit the stores and select his own gifts for me. Pfft!

Slather yourself in cheap self-tanner and see if you can't make your skin turn orange. Now, this is not the Orange way, but let us not unnecessarily constrain the Orange Christmas concept.

Clementines or tangerines in the Christmas stocking are a great idea—Santa always had a tangerine or two for young Orange back in the day. And no, that does not constitute cannibalism.

Whether the ground is blanketed with snow or not, you can still spray-paint it orange. Really. Try it.

Last, I wrote about "Christmas in September" a few months ago. The gist of it was to donate money in September to aid those displaced by Hurricane Katrina, in lieu of giving holiday presents in December. As it turns out, my extended family wasn't at all interested in this plan. However, we here at Casa Tangerine are incredibly lucky; we have a place to live, we have a degree of financial security, and our friends and family are all safe. So we're exchanging gifts as well as donating (again) to the American Red Cross Katrina fund; I listed a few other good places to donate in the "Christmas in September" link. If you can afford to do so, I encourage you to make a donation to aid those who are less fortunate than you—your local food bank, the Red Cross (Katrina, the South Asian earthquake, etc.), a shelter for abused women or the homeless, or any other organization that helps people.

Have a very merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah, a festive Festivus, a warm Kwanzaa, a sunny post-solstice, or [insert your preferred celebration here]!