Every regular reader of the Macaroni Dish knows by now that the Christmas season cannot truly commence until Guido and I have drunk vermouth, eaten pork, and hung the lights.

Tonight, we did all those things. And not for the first time.

As usual, we made some major strategic errors -- the main one stemming from the fact that red vermouth is a harsh thing to drink in large quantities. This year, we cast about for an alternative cocktail. We knew that vermouth was too tied in with tradition to abandon outright: some ceremonial sip of vermouth, however small, would be mandatory. And if vermouth could be incorporated throughout, so much the better.

We considered drinking Manhattans.

This we rejected, deciding that vermouth mixed with whiskey would be much too strong.

So we scanned aisles of the Stew Leonard's wine shop looking for new ideas. We spotted the bottle of dry vermouth on a shelf nearby the gin.

We could have martinis.

This option we cheerfully embraced.

(Now, if the field of everyday life had been staffed with Logic Umpires, it would have been at this point that a whistle would be blown and a red flag thrown to the field: "Logic Failure, deciding to drink gin as if it were beer, 15 yard-penalty, no sale.")

We stacked the old grill with pork and foil-shrouded beets and we set about hanging the lights. It was the crowning effort of an extraordinary weekend: the suprise party yesterday for Andre's upcoming 40th birthday, the totally awesome Skype call Guido set up for his mom to the family in Italy this afternoon, the totally unreasonable amount of alcohol we consumed this evening.

(None of those prissy cocktail olives for us -- we used little gerkins... which was a little strange... and gave our beverages a pronounced "pickle-juice" overtone... we killed the whole bottle of gin... bad ideas all around.)

The lights are lit and that is what matters this season. That and re-hydration: waking up for work tomorrow morning is going to be killer.