“The glitter lamp is actually, in my mind, better than a Christmas tree.”

I came home Sunday afternoon from having heard the wonderful Cantata, and I decided that I was going to decorate my home just a little bit for Christmas. This is the first time that I have decorated this home in a Christmas theme. I live by myself except for my service dog, so the decorating is really mainly for my pleasure. Several years ago, I went to a Christmas party where the attendants were asked to bring a white elephant gift. A white elephant gift is defined as an object that is not broken, that works the way it’s supposed to, but it is something that is of no use or no interest to the person who owns it. So, we each took a white elephant gift wrapped up in holiday paper and placed it under the Christmas tree. And then during the party, numbers were drawn. And the person who got number one was the first person that was allowed to go up to the Christmas tree and pick a gift out. And when my turn came, I picked out a box and when I opened it up, I discovered I had a neon glitter lamp. It reminds me of a lava lamp that someone gave my parents at Christmastime long ago. The lava lamp when plugged into the wall and heated up, produced globules that bubbled up and traveled around within the lamp. And the lamp, that particular lamp, I remember as being blue. This is not a lava lamp that I got at the party. It’s a neon glitter lamp. And the color is green, and that’s good because green is a Christmas color. So, I rearranged the furniture just a little bit in the living room, and I placed the neon glitter lamp in front of a window and every night at sundown, I turn the lava light on and I open the blinds of the window, so that I can sit in the living room and contemplate the glitter as it floats up and down within the lamp. The transparent glass allows me to see the glitter flowing around, and anybody driving by my house can look over at the front window in my living room and see the lamp too. The glitter lamp is actually, in my mind, better than a Christmas tree because I don’t have to worry about it drying out and dropping needles onto the floor that my dog might lick up and suffer internal injuries from.