I’ve complained about bad Christmas music, and raved about the awesome Nintendo Wii, but now it’s time for plain ol’, straight-up Christmas cheer.

We had a real tree last year, and the year before in New York, but this year, we opted for not just artificial — but unabashedly artificial. This year, we went white.

Because of all of my travel this fall — gone until the day before Thanksgiving, plus I’ll be at Midwest from this coming Tuesday until the day before Christmas Eve — we got the tree kind of early for maximum cheeriness. It arrived on November 27, just a few days after Thanksgiving. The box for this 7.5′ pre-lit tree was huge. Loki, true to form, was pretty psyched about the box.

The stand, on its own, was not particularly cheery.

And the bottom half of the tree, pre-shaping, was downright sad.

But once the parts were assembled and the tree was plugged in, it started to cheer up.

Once the tree was unboxed, we took the box to the storage space to drop it off, and picked up the boxes of Christmas decorations. Loki enjoyed these boxes, too.

Prior to decorating, I took this picture of the tree, and I accidentally had the flash on. The result is that the tree looks insane — and the exposure allows us to see the somewhat foreboding clouds outside. It seems that Jesus doesn’t approve of white Christmas trees.

Ah, that’s better. Much less scary.

Now it’s time to hang the ornaments! We got a few new fun ones this year. Here’s Fat Santa.

And here’s Mr. Snowman in his dapper purple scarf. Ned Rorem would be proud.

Here’s a bear of some sort.

And the bear’s friend, AEJ’s recurring favorite, the squirrel.

My favorite, for three consecutive years, is this snowman.

Loki just likes the protective tissue paper.

Who’s hungry? This damn deer kept trying to eat the tree.

I call this one “Self Portrait with Reindeer.”

Again, the flash is not a good thing. Loki really isn’t quite this scary.

See? He can be quite cute.

I know there are a lot of shots of the cat, but come on — the cat is damn cute. Here he is posing next to his own image in wrapping paper. (Yes, AEJ had wrapping paper made last year with pictures of Loki.)

See, I was serious about that wrapping paper.

And here’s the tree, fully decorated, with AEJ enjoying its warm, cheerful glow.

Happy holidays!