Decking the halls with powersaws

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through our house, it was a total disaster even for the mouse.

OK. The reality is there is no mouse. But the disaster part isn't much of an exaggeration.

That's because we're in the middle of a major home remodeling project. We just finished redoing the living room in time to get out the artificial Christmas tree and decorate it for the holidays. The rest of the house still needs a makeover, but Santa won't wait.

Usually we get the house decorated weeks before Christmas. This year, the task wasn't done until last weekend because we had no living room floor. After pulling up the carpet, Joni and I installed laminate flooring. For weeks, our living room looked more like a giant tool box than anything resembling a living room.

We crammed our living room furniture into the dining room, leaving little room for even the dog to get around.

I'm sure our dog, Cassie, is glad we have now reclaimed part of the house. That's allowed her more room to roam. She was beginning to wonder just what was happening to our home sweet home.

Even with all the hammering and sawing, it could have been worse. We could have been stuck with a holiday fruitcake.

For some people, fruitcake isn't a holiday treat. It's an heirloom.

A fruitcake that is an estimated 125 years old is expected to be the focus of attention on national television tonight.

An 83-year-old Michigan man will show off his great-grandmother's fruitcake to comedian Jay Leno.

The cake's baker died in Ohio in 1879 and the cake remained untouched for 85 years. That's understandable. After all, it is a fruitcake.

The Michigan man plans to pass along the fruitcake to his son. He told The Associated Press he doesn't have anything else that is a family heirloom.

It's stories like this that make Christmas such a touching time of year.

A holiday like this has its share of trivia.

In 1647, the English Parliament did its best to act like Scrooge, banning Christmas. Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell considered feasting and revelry immoral. Fortunately, the ban was lifted in 1660 and people have been having a good time on Christmas ever since.

All those Christmas greetings have been a major ordeal for the U.S. Postal Service.

As early as 1822, the postmaster in Washington, D.C., worried about the extra holiday mail. He proposed limiting the number of cards a person could send.

Even though commercial cards weren't available back then, people were sending so many homemade cards that 16 extra postmen had to be hired in the city.

Fortunately for Hallmark, the proposed law never passed. That made possible Werner Erhard's entry into the Guinness Book of World Records in 1975 for sending the most Christmas cards ever: 62,824 in a single year.

These days people commonly complain about the commercialization of Christmas. But commerce and Christmas have long been intertwined.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer made his first appearance in 1939 to promote the Montgomery Ward department store chain.

And, yes, "grandma got run over by a reindeer," but only in song.

Merry Christmas.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.