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The train set arrives home in a blur of excitement, runs twice on the living room carpet, derails at the

Every December the shops fill with plastic garlands, glittered cones and tinsel that sheds all season, and every January it

The sofa is where Christmas actually happens — family photos, visiting guests, afternoon naps — yet in most homes it

A single candle in a window is the oldest Christmas welcome there is, a light kept burning for whoever passes

On most houses the garage door is the single biggest surface facing the street, often a third of the whole

A family backyard can work beautifully for children and still feel like a calm, grown-up garden, but only when it

A trip to the park sounds simple until you count the drive, the wait for a free swing and the

Send most children into the backyard and they drift back indoors within twenty minutes, because a lawn and a fence

Plastic playsets promise adventure, but within a couple of summers the colors fade, the plastic cracks, and the whole thing

Most front yards get whatever survived last year thrown at them: a tangled light string over one shrub, a lopsided

A full ladder-and-clips light display takes a whole weekend and a head for heights, yet a bare house looks forgotten

The bookcase is the biggest surface in most living rooms, yet at Christmas it either stays bare while the rest

By four in the afternoon a winter room is already dark, and most Christmas decor makes it worse, because garlands,

Neutral Christmas decor has a habit of sliding into plain and cold, while most garlands shout red, glitter or shiny

Deep green should be the richest color of Christmas, yet in real rooms emerald often turns heavy or swampy, especially