We must admit that tend to view the holidays as a theatrical production. In both cases, there is a great deal of preparation before the event, a bustle of activity during the event and then, thank goodness, the event is over. This is not to say, however, that we do not enjoy most of the holiday activity. A great part of this is due to the fact that we have quite successfully managed to simplify our responsibilities for the holiday celebration.

First and foremost, we do not undertake, with the exception of two cheesecakes, any holiday food preparation. While most people are busily making Christmas goodies, we have managed to develop a network of friends who arrive at the door with much appreciated cookies, candies, brownies, breads, doughnuts, fruits and nuts. So we are able to enjoy all sorts of homemade goodies, made by people who actually enjoy making them. And this year, we finally realized that we could freeze some of the goodies and thus stretch out the time frame in which we can enjoy them, creating the best of all possible worlds.

We spend dinner on Christmas Eve with the Ecklers in Fly Creek and dinner on Christmas Day with the Bullards in Milford. The wee-we, who is not so wee anymore, and Annie prepare our Christmas Day brunch. New Year’s Eve finds us with good friends at the Hawkeye Grill. We do hold one holiday party, Twelfth Night, when we invite friends in for, what else, a potluck supper. Of course, for Twelfth Night we do supply some beverages and a dish to pass so there is some kitchen work involved. But we manage to keep it to the minimum.

As to organizing the events, Annie, with her background in stage management, has moved the opening of Christmas presents from the somewhat, in our opinion, unusual Ellsworth Christmas Eve spot to the more traditional time of Christmas morning. And fortunately, Annie does not seem to see the need to arise promptly at 6 a.m. in order to open the presents. All in all, a definite improvement over years past.

And, after opening the presents, if we had to pick our most favorite for this year, we think we would have trouble deciding. But we will note that we have been dragged into the 21st century, kicking and screaming of course, with a gift from the wee-we and Annie of not only a DVD player but also a subscription to Netflix. We are not certain we are up for this but we have decided to give it a whirl. Of course we will now be glued to the TV set as we will have to watch as many movies as is humanly possible in order to get our (or wee-we’s) money’s worth.

Of course, with our very first selection from Netflix, we ran into trouble. We chose "The Best of Danny Kaye: The Television Years" which was not available at our local shipping center and so it had to be sent from Gaithersburg, Md. We suspect this has to do with our somewhat unusual choice and so may be something which we will find happening over and over. Ah, such are the trials of the non-traditional thinker.

Of course, with the DVD player, we also received "Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas," "The Producers" and "White Christmas," all of which we watched during the holidays. And while "The Producers" was new to us, both "Emmet Otter’s Jud-Band Christmas" and "White Christmas" are long time Ellsworth family favorites. In the new to us DVD format, we received all sorts of extra added attractions such as the original and the re-release movie trailers for "White Christmas." We were somewhat bemused by the re-release trailer which said, and we quote, "It’s the picture for every holiday in the year ... And it makes every day a holiday!"

We must admit that we actually hadn’t, until we watched the trailer, considered viewing "White Christmas" at any time other than Christmas. But perhaps we have missed something. Maybe it would work for New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Day, Valentine’s Day, President’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Arbor Day, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Father’s Day and so forth and so on. The list of holidays could be endless. The other alternative, of course, is to get a DVD of "Holiday Inn" which actually does cover a number of holidays, including Christmas, throughout the year. Of course, we would suspect that one would not need a subscription to Netflix as one would be so busy watching either "White Christmas" or "Holiday Inn" or both that one would have time for no other movie.

In closing, we must admit that our least favorite Christmas gift arrived on the fourth day of Christmas in the form of a combined tax bill from both the Town and the County of Otsego. We must say the town did quite well as our town tax bill was down from 2006. Unfortunately, the drop in that bill of $1.67 did little to counteract the far different story of the county tax bill. That bill went up $349.17, a whopping 31.4 percent increase from 2006. All in all, we suspect we are staring at something in the neighborhood of a total of $8,000 in property taxes for 2007. And although we realize this is less than the tax bills of many others, it still seems like a lot of money to us. And unfortunately, we tend to think that not even watching "White Christmas," "Holiday Inn" or even "The Best of Danny Kaye: The Television Years" will help. [an error occurred while processing this directive]