A few weeks before Christmas our Tivo, Overlord 2, sucked up an old Martha Stewart Christmas special. These prime time chestnuts are ripe for mocking so I turned it on while Husband was finishing dinner. I’m not normally susceptible to Martha-induced craziness, but at one point Martha looked into the camera and commanded, “If you’ve never seen the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center you simply must go.” My head whipped around and I heard myself intone, “Must…see…The Tree.”

Remember the Smile Time episode of Angel? It was like that, only Martha must have finished sucking the life-force out of all the children and moved on to me.

I’ve been obsessed with The Tree ever since. At any given moment, 5% of my brain is whirring away thinking about the tree.

Despite all of that scheming, there was just no way to get to New York before Christmas. Fortunately, the tree is up until January 7th and it’s ridiculously cheap to visit New York right now so we booked a room by The Tree (and, bonus, MoMa). This is good because I haven’t been feeling very well so I’m not sure how much I’ll really get to do once we get there.

On a related note, this was one of my favorite Anya moments on Buffy:

ANYA: Martha Stewart isn’t a demon. (to Buffy) She’s a witch.
XANDER: Please, she- (pauses) Really?
ANYA: Of course. Nobody could do that much decoupage without calling on the powers of darkness. (Ep. 6.09, “Wrecked”)

Here’s the Smile Time trailer. It still makes me laugh: