Dear Seattle,

Dear Seattle,
I have fallen in love with your West-coast Christmastime beauty. I love your funny iconic Space-age tower, built to impress the communists of America's superior modern style.
I love your coffee shops on every corner. I love how serious you are about your coffee (and how you call a normal cup of joe a "drip"). I love how your cappuccinos come with heart-shaped foam.
I love your art museum that exhibits Picasso and gives me a new appreciation for the master of cubism.
I love your neighborhoods of cool people who don't want to be called cool. And your edgy neighborhoods that display bronze statues of Lenin and trolls under freeway bridges.
I love your fish market in which I could buy handmade jewelry, dried flowers, sushi, and a copy of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse all in one place.
I love your mountains that emerge from the fog and surround the city, wrapping all that civilization in a kind of wildness with their white-capped ridges.
I love your pine forests, dark and dense and fresh-scented.
And yes, I even love your rain that gives everything a glossy shine.

This year I spent my first Christmas away from home and away from Vermont. This year I brought Christmas to my best friend, alone in the rainy city of Seattle. And I found Christmas spirit in the lights of downtown and the bustle of holiday shoppers. I found Christmas joy in the dance of the sugarplum fairies turned snowball fight in an unorthodox performance of the Nutcracker. I found the taste of Christmas in mom's peppermint candycane cookies. I found that what makes Christmas Christmas-y is being with someone well-loved, no matter where you are.

Dear Seattle, thank you for bringing me Christmas.