Our Best Worst Christmas Idea Ever...

... had four legs and a wagging tail—a puppy!

- BY Megan McArdle FROM THE WASHINGTON POST

THERE IS LITTLE more charming than the idea of a Christmas puppy. The festive music, the cooing family, that adorable little face with the holiday lights shining from its eyes.

The reality, however, is something of a wreck.

There you are trying to bake Christmas cookies, close out the year-end books or shepherd the kids through pageants and parties ... and there is the puppy, needing to be let out every two hours. The time not spent mopping up accidents will instead be devoted to keeping the puppy from chewing on the tree, swallowing ornaments or knocking over the Nativity scene. And you will be trying to manage this on too little sleep, because, did I mention? The puppy needs to be let out every few hours, including at night.

My husband and I knew all this, all the reasons against it, and then went ahead and got a Christmas puppy anyway.

Our miniature bullmastiff was, as expected, adorable: the melting eyes, the oversize paws, the mini crocodile teeth that he ineptly tried to maul us with. We named him Huckleberry and drove him back from Indiana to our home in Washington, D.C., through hills dusted with a fairy mist of snow.

The mist iced the roads and dropped the visibility to about four feet, forcing us to make an emergency overnight stop at a dismal motel. Little Huck's eyes widened at his first snow. He dipped his precious little snout into the strange substance, gave the most darling sneeze—then resolutely refused to do his business on that ridiculous stuff. We had to resort to a puppy pad in our bathroom, which made the motel room smell like a New York subway station in high summer.

But as far as we were concerned, it was sweet perfume, and we fell asleep in a fog of happiness.