Some of us experience Currier & Ives Christmases every year, and then there are the rest of us. The decorating doesn’t go quite right, the cookies burn and the gravy is lumpy. But that doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy Christmas.

This year our decorating efforts after the first week of December are where they always are at this time — ground zero. But we’re at least thinking about it, and soon we’ll have to do something about it. Somewhere in the garage is my hand-made Star of Bethlehem, created from old metal coat hangers more than 10 years ago. The first year it or two it actually resembled a star when I surrounded the coat hanger contraption with cheap lights and raised it high into the towering fir tree in our front yard that will eventually crash into our living room. But as the years went by the hangers lost their shape. For a few years we had the Little Kite of Bethlehem, and recently it’s been the Little Blob of Bethlehem, as if someone had put lights around the star of the old Steve McQueen horror movie. But anything with lights around it is pretty at night, so I’ll hoist it up into the tree again this year.

The kids are starting to drift home from college, and soon they’ll be tearing the house apart in search of our manger scene, an integral part of our Christmas decorating. Assuming they find it either under the stairs or in the garage, they’ll probably discover that Baby Jesus has disappeared — again; that another one of the angels has a broken wing; and that the plastic alligator I stuck in the place of the missing donkey probably should be replaced with another donkey if we can remember to buy one. The alligator somehow detracts from the Christmas spirit, but it’s better than a vacant spot in the display.

Soon, it will be time to buy a Christmas tree, which is always a traumatic experience because they cost so much. If you lost money this year in your 401K, try investing in a Christmas tree farm. You can probably retire by this time next year. The longer you wait to buy your tree the cheaper it gets, which explains why we sometimes open our presents on Easter.

Once the tree is standing proudly in the living room, the next question is, where are the decorations? Another search of the downstairs and garage will turn them up, but of course many of the most sentimental bulbs have broken despite having been lovingly wrapped in old newspaper the year before. “My First Christmas,” can still be pieced together from the broken glass, but at the expense of a number of bloody fingers. Oh well, at least it teaches us that nothing lasts forever.

Once the tree is lit up, it’s time to make the Christmas cookies. Unfortunately, our tradition is that there’s never any flour in the house because the art teacher in the family took it and let her students make decorations out of it. So if your kid comes home with a Christmas ornament this year, it’s probably made out of what would have been my Christmas cookies. I hope you enjoy it.

It looks like 2001 in our house will bring another Christmas that falls short of Martha Stewart standards. But with everyone home for the holiday, what could be better?

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