Now THAT'S dedication to the holidays...

Leaving my friend's house earlier this evening, we paused in her doorway chatting.

"Look, across the street," she said with a grin. "They still have their Christmas tree."

And they did. It was clearly in the window.

Unwilling to believe, I protested. "It might just be tree-shaped art."

But in my secret heart of hearts (blackened and hole-ridden though it be), I know it's a tree. There's something about this neighbourhood that makes it cling to the vestiges of Christmases past. Decorations are still everywhere. Lights. Santas.

And only last week, I walked by a house with a brown, deader-than-dead tree lying on a front lawn for the garbage pick-up... with traces of tinsel still clinging for dear life to its rusty, shedding branches.

Yet the plants are starting to bud, then sun shines and the birds are all a-chatter.

Am I in Xmas Never-Neverland?