Christmas in July ...

When you take a lot of photos, you keep some because you like their aesthetics, and you keep some for sentimental reasons. This year's last holiday-season photo is one that falls in the latter category.

I don't know if they still do it now, but for many years a number of the national park lodges had a tradition of celebrating Christmas in the summertime ... the rationale being that since the hotels were closed in the winter, a December 25th celebration was pretty much out of the question. So back when I worked at Glacier, we celebrated Christmas every July 25th. There was a big employee dinner, and caroling, and gifts, and of course a tree.

This is the Christmas tree that graced the lobby of Lake McDonald Lodge back in July of 1981. A few days earlier, the hotel bellmen had piled into their rattletrap old stake truck and made a surreptitious run out to the National Forest for it ... and then we all put the thing up and piled on the homemade decorations. One of my favorite trees ever.