By Margaret Evans, Editor

Greetings, reader. It's a Tuesday morning, and I'm writing from my kitchen, wearing flannel pajamas, a heavy sweatshirt, a brown cape that my husband loathes, and my daughter's fuzzy pink pig slippers. (They're actually fuzzy pink lamb slippers – I know, I bought them – but she insists they're pigs, and you have to pick your battles with 12-year-olds.)

By Margaret Evans, Editor

I spent the holidays in north Alabama at my parents’ house, a rambling cottage on the Tennessee River that’s just about the best place in the world for Christmasing. It’s always a charmed interlude, this week of food and festivity and family; but like all families, we’ve been known to have our little . . . tensions.

A Harrowing Holiday Adventure

By Margaret Evans, Editor

Last weekend, it almost rained on my parade.

   First, some background: I'm one of those high strung, hyper-sensitive people who mentally elevates every pleasant event that occurs semi-regularly – or even more than twice – to that hallowed realm known as "Tradition," setting up an endless series of sacred expectations that will inevitably be violated by reality, battering my soul and leaving me desolate.