text: As for your commandment not to decorate our tree until Christmas Eve, well . . . That may be the tradition in your family, but not mine.
  
  Back when the kids were little, on the second Saturday after Thanksgiving, it was quite a big deal to go to the parish Boy Scout lot and pick out a live tree.  Then we would haul it home in the minivan, set it up and spend the afternoon decorating it, each year adding a special new ornament. Guess that makes me a bad Catholic as well.
  
  I also appreciate the advice on which charities and causes I should or should not support, but I do think I am capable of deciding that for myself.