Day 50/365 Santa Baby

Our family's primary holiday is Halloween, but we still have a couple Christmas traditions.
One of those is the "Half-Dressed Christmas Tree", well-known to any dog owner, designed to
thwart the "fluffy tail wag". It's also a Christmas present for the cats of the house, who treasure the opportunity to climb up the tree, and poke their furry heads out at eye level to any humans that wander by.

A more normal tradition is the Santa collection. At some point I realized I had acquired more than the customary number of Santa's and then started looking for a special one each year to add to the mantle. We've now run out of room to display them, so just the favorites come out.

These Santa's are the oldest, and in the folk art tradition. The chubby Santa on the right was a gift from my mom, handmade by an artist she knew.

The long tall wooden Santa face stays out all year - sortof like a Santa "Green Man". The Santa and little girl was bought for my daughter when she was born. And the Half Moon Santa-on-a-Stick was bought for our last Minnesota house, along with a couple of the tall thin Norse-style Santa's.

We found this Scottish Santa a couple years ago - a must, since we have 5 strains of Highland Scots in our family history. And yes, we have bagpipe Christmas music too.

This is a nod to our 23 years in Minnesota (and DH's home), Santa-in-an-Ojibway-birchbark- canoe, dressed in fur robes, with holly and berries, and various wild creatures alongside. It's huge, almost 20" long, but worth the space.

Tomorrow - the Christmas Village, or as Seri the Cat thinks of it: the set for Catzilla!