Darry's POV

The day after Thanksgiving, we put up the Christmas tree. Personally, I wanted to wait. But Ponyboy and Soda insisted.

"Come on Darry, it's Brianna's first Christmas." Pony pleaded with me that morning after I had said no.

"Yeah." Soda agreed. Not that I'm surprised. He'd keep that tree up all year if you'd let him. Christmas always was his favorite holiday.

"Oh, okay. It's not like we have anything better to do." I gave in. An hour later, I had brought the tree down from the attic and we got it up and decorated.

Brianna just watched us as she played with some of her toys. She seemed to really like the lights. When I turned them on, she smiled and pointed.

"See, she likes having the tree up." Soda said as he sat down with her on the floor. "Don't you, sweetie?"

I grinned. "Yeah, sure little buddy. She's a baby. All babies like shiny stuff. Besides, she doesn't even know what Christmas is yet."

"Oh, don't be such a scrooge, Darry." Soda teased. "You like having the tree up and you know it."

"Well, at least I don't have to worry about it later." I sighed as I plopped down on the arm chair.

Soda's POV

I stuck my tongue out at Darry who had picked up the news paper and was reading it. I like Christmas. Always have. And this year, Christmas was extra special because Brianna would be celebrating it for the first time. The pictures I had taken of her and me were sitting at Steve's house, wrapped and ready to go. I still couldn't wait for Darry and Pony to open them.

"I'm going down to the vacant lot for a while." Pony announced as he slipped out the front door.

"Be back by six!" Darry yelled after Pony, knowing that Pony would most likely be late. "I don't know why I always tell him when to be home. He's going to be late anyway."

"Blah!" Brianna cried as if she were agreeing with him.

"Yeah." Darry said as he went back to reading his paper. "It's nice to know someone here agrees with me."

I shook my head and turned my attention to playing with Brianna. She didn't want to play, though. Instead, she crawled to the couch, pulled herself up and started to scoot around the room. Only stopping where she couldn't rech the next piece of furniture and then I had to take her hand and help her.

"Don't let her get to close to the tree." Darry mumbled from behind the paper.

"I won't let her get hurt by the tree, Darry. She'll be fine." I assured him. "Besides, the tree is away from all the furniture."

"She can still crawl over there, Soda." Darry said.

"And we'll keep an eye on her. It's not like I'm going to let her hurt herself." I told him as I helped Brianna walk back to the couch. Normally, she would have used the coffee table to get back to the couch, bu we had used it to put the boxes of ornaments on when we decorated the tree and none of us had put it back.

"She'll be walking without help soon." Darry commented as Brianna used his legs to help her scoot along when she got to his chair. He was used to it though. Sometimes, he'd even take her hand and help her.

"I know. Maybe she'll start walking on Christmas." I said.

Darry laughed. "I think she's still too little for that, Soda. But if she does, that'll be great."

"Dah?" Brianna asked looking at Darry.

"What?" Darry asked grinning at her. But she just continued to scoot around the room. She did stop a few times to look at the tree. She sure seemed to like those lights.