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For the record, I am not from Brookline, MA, Christmas Island. I am from the United States. It's just that Christmas Island was one of the places one could be from , and I just never heard of Christmas Island, and it sounded cool. If I was going to be on an island, it would be Christmas Island.

I would have a short, fat Christmas tree and decorate it with the ornaments left to me by my mother (may she rest in peace), and not put any tinsel on the tree because the cat might eat it and get it all wound up in her intestines and have to go to the emergency room with all the other animals who have eaten tinsel and gingerbread and things they should not have eaten. And also on the tree would be the ornaments that I have collected myself as an adult; ones from friends and ones I buy for myself, one each year.

And I would hang the stockings that my mother made, hers, my father's, and mine (I guess my brother has his), and stick all the Christmas cards I get on the door (would I have a door on an island? Yes, it would be a homemade door that I would use later as a raft to get off the island), and I would play Christmas music: A Charlie Brown Christmas, Barbra Streisand-A Christmas Album, Cyrus Chestnut & Friends-A Charlie Brown Christmas, which is Cyrus Chestnut's tribute to Vince Guaraldi, and Now That's What I Call Christmas! If you like Christmas music, I highly recommend these CDs.

And I would sip hot chocolate with whipped cream and pet the cat, while watching the snow fall gently outside. And I guess now that I'm thinking of it I don't really need an island, because this is what I do every Christmas in my apartment.

And my mother didn't really leave me the ornaments, I found them after she died and I took them. Over the years I have weeded out the ones that were not particularly special to me, but I saved the ones that remind me of my mom and Christmases of my childhood. And every year when I take the ornaments out and put them on the tree I cry, because we had good Christmases when I was a child, and it reminds me of my mom, who died when I was 21, and I miss her. Christmas is my favorite holiday.