Happy holidays!

As I belatedly installed a pack of "holiday lites" on our Christmas tree last night, I realised just how comprehensively the C-word has been banished from the American vocabulary.

Google "happy holidays", and you get 61.5 million hits. Now try "merry Christmas": a pitiful 40 million. It's no exaggeration to say that in the past couple of months, I've seen the word Christmas in print about four times.

Tens of millions of people in this country don't celebrate it, but still it seems as though someone has done a colossal search and replace on every instance of the word in the United States, substituting something more inclusive, but also much blander.

I'm not religious, and I don't have strong feelings either way, but I'm fascinated at just how quickly and comprehensively the word has been airbrushed into oblivion.

I'm certainly not in the same camp as Fox News commentator John Gibson who, three years ago, published a book entitled The war against Christmas: how the liberal plot to ban the sacred Christian holiday is worse than you thought ("I had a guy who called me and talked about the Christmas party, actually a holiday party now, and he said people would whisper Merry Christmas in each other's ears.").

By the way, if you're looking for a last-minute stocking filler for an unhinged relative, you might do worse than Gibson's hot new opus, How the left swiftboated America: the liberal media conspiracy to make you think George Bush was the worst president in history.

Anyway, in keeping with the magic of Christmas (which most Americans actually do very well, and very enthusiastically), here's some poetry from a member of a profession not normally known for its literary leanings. Her name is Liz Stroebel, and she's a realtor, or what we Brits call an estate agent. This is the complete list of all her condos (which we call flats or apartments) in Homes & Land of Greater New Orleans magazine. The poetry is probably unintentional.

2726 Prytania $229,900
1563-65 N Roman $155,000
2512 Magazine $195,000
736 Harmony $112,500
7508 Asteroid $109,000
2035 Deogracias $125,000
3100 Rue Parc Fontaine $69,000
3225 Whisper $169,000
3304 Meraux $110,000

And finally, here's a painting I did of our house:

Actually I used a very clever piece of software called PhotoArtMaster Classic, which turns photographs into paintings or drawings. It's so much quicker than a brush and easel, and there's none of that tiresome cleaning up afterwards...