Celebrating Christmas in the nation’s capital means choosing from a smorgasbord of sensual delights. Here are the top 10 ways Washington celebrates the yuletide:

» This year’s National Christmas Tree, a towering 39-foot Colorado blue spruce, is decorated with thousands of lights and 250 platter-sized ornaments by Hargrove, a Lanham-based special events company that designed the floats for Harry Truman’s 1949 inaugural parade. The presidential lighting ceremony on the Ellipse in early December has been a tradition ever since President Calvin Coolidge threw the first switch in 1923.