Mauve Friday: RTC Named Top Christmas Spot, But Spirit of the Season Is Everywhere

It's the holiday season once again, and our BFFs at the Washington Post gave us an early holiday present, if by "present" you mean naming our favorite ersatz downtown one of DC's best "festive neighborhoods," if by "neighborhood" you mean a "midscale shopping center with a confusing parking app."

But we digress! Give us some good blockquote, our favorite correspondent, the Peasant from Less Sought After South Reston: 

Words I never thought applied to Reston Town Center, aka one of the DMV’s “8 most festive neighborhoods,” according to the Washington Post... Right up there with the moneyed elites of Capitol Hill and Georgetown, as well as the hip and edgy Penn Quarter and Adams Morgan. Words fail me, which is why this is such a short email.

Along with the ice rink and a couple of RTC's midscale eateries and watering holes, the Post gushes about a pop-up Christmas bar that's located... not in Reston Town Center proper, but its equally edgy neighbor. But that's okay! We've got plenty of festive spirit in Reston. Even if we can't imagine it, we can enlist our trusty semi-sentient, HOA-friendly MI (mauve intelligence) bot to give us a sense of why we live in such a festive place:

The crack RTC parking squad has apparently turned in their golf carts and bumblebees for more seasonally appropriate attire. But there's more!

It's always nice to see the DRB put aside their differences about white stone and red mulch to focus on the spirit of the holidays. Also, it appears that approximately 2/3 of the board has been cloned, but that's a small price to pay for the Spirit of the Season. Speaking of which:

We honestly can't tell if Santa is trying to rip off the chimney so he can distribute gifts on his appointed rounds, or whether he's been enlisted by the Clone DRB to appropriately sanction homeowners who fail to paint their chimney stacks the appropriate color of taupe. 

We boiled the equivalent of all the water in Lake Anne and Lake Newport to generate these images, and honestly, we have no regrets. And luckily, we don't need AI to illustrate how you, a proud Restonian, can give and receive in the spirit of the holidays without leaving home:

Just keep checking your mailbox for the annual, ever-so-slightly larger RA assessment delivered not by Santa, but a uniformed federal agent, the end.