X-mas in Orange County

Dear Readers,
After struggling for 2+ weeks with wondering what to write about (and after much prodding from my blog happy friends), I've finally come up with a theme for my next two entries. Christmas. Currently, I live in a very nice community in a wealthy part of the OC. So, my pre-Christmas experience has included everything from artificially pine-scented parking lots to refrigerated outdoor ice skating rinks. One of our world famous local malls boasts that its tree is the tallest in the nation, even taller than that in Rockefeller center! And, if you stand in the correct spot of the mall, you can see the tree and the ocean at the same time. I even had a celebrity sighting while shopping for presents the other night. I saw Steve Burton with his wife, buying children's clothing. If you don't know who that is, I'm not going to explain. But of course Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without chilly weather, right? If 75 and sunny, with humidity of about 2% doesn't scream "here comes Santa Claus!", I'm not sure what does. The point is that the OC X-mas is very different from the Christmas that the rest of the country experiences. I'm going back east today to spend a couple of weeks in upstate New York. I'm told that it really feels like Christmas out there. It is about traditions, and faith, and doing your best to not freeze your ass offf. I'll be back to report on the what I find...