Christmas Time in the Suburbs.

There's a certain euphoria, a certain giddy freedom attendant upon the realization that no, I no longer have to go out--half dressed and frantic on a winter morning--to scrape the ice from my car and start the engine fifteen minutes before leaving for work. I call this feeling "What I Like About Arizona Winter." I call everything else "What I Don't Like About Arizona Winter."

Arizona, you think you're so special, attracting the snowbirds and all, but you aren't fooling us. No, when you rolled out the hot cider in the grocery stories in October, we were not fooled, because the high on October 18 was 92 degrees. We knew that, to make hot cider, we needed merely forget the jug in the trunk for a day or two.

You did not fool us when we went for light-seeing walks and saw your light-up snowmen next to your front-yard cacti (although your nativity scenes look very realistic and arid and all).

And finally, Phoenix, you did not fool us with the title "World's Friendliest Airport," but that's another story.

And so with great contentment I find myself in Kansas on Christmas Eve. There's no snow on the ground (yet!) but at least things are brown and ugly like they ought to be. At least all possible allergens are frozen and dead. At least there are no freaking palm trees.

At least we are with family. Patient Philip has been putting up with all of the Risch-family Christmas traditions, which include compulsive kitty watching, obsessive present wrapping (We. Are. Martha. Stewart.), and obscene food cooking; and which will culminate tomorrow in Anne and Erin's Matching Christmas Eve Skirts the candle-light Christmas Eve service after which we will tell the same story about 4-year-old Drew crying silent tears as burning wax dripped down his hand the first time he was allowed to have a candle of his own. Then will come Christmas Day, as carefully scripted as a play, because we, the Risch Family, have spent two decades aggressively honing in on the traditions that suit us best.

For us, like many families, even the smallest and quirkiest traditions are a source of great joy during the holidays. Sometimes it's hard to remember that what we're celebrating was not in fact traditional at all, but rather a radical, shattering event--the Word becoming flesh.