Before You Marry Someone Try Christmas Decorating Together
The presents are wrapped, the stocking stuffers have been evaluated, and any item-per-person discrepancies have been corrected; the sugar cookie-scented candle has been burning to mask the scent of our artificial tree (Team Fake for this sneezy, allergy-ridden family). I’m finished baking cookies, and I have a couple of hostess gifts wrapped and ready to bring to holiday parties.
Outside, our neighborhood is turning into a twinkle-light-festooned Christmas village. Let’s do this Christmas thing…
WAIT! We haven’t hung the lights outside yet! Ohhhhhhh….the fun! I cannot wait for the gay, happy times that ensue when Bill and I hang Christmas lights together!!
You know I’m kidding, right? I’m also kidding about everything in the first paragraph except for the sneezing. You didn’t think I had it that together, did you? The reality: People have been posting pictures of their decorated Christmas trees on social media for the last two weeks. Meanwhile, I’m over here undecorated and wondering why we don’t have any clean towels when I just did laundry on Monday.
Christmas decorating is such a chore that I like to complete it in stages. There is the getting out the boxes stage, the putting up the tree stage, and my current stage, which is sitting on the couch and staring at dusty, tangled lights while eating pizza stage.
Is it just me, or is putting lights on the outside of your house the most universally hated task? I find it one of the most detested adulting chores (next to filling up the car’s gas tank) and have affectionally renamed Putting Up Christmas Lights Day as Swear Day, where the McGinnis’ make cheerful comments like:
“Damn it!”
“Leave me alone, I’m already pissed!”
“I hate everyone and everything right now.”
“The dust! I can’t stop sneezing!!”
“OMG! Seriously! WTF?”
Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas decorating. I just loved it a lot more when I didn’t have to do it. For starters, there is the way Bill gets the bins out of the attic - which are buried behind a mountain of debris we keep “just in case.” There’s nothing like listening to hissing, sighing, a large crash, and then “OH SHIT!” to get you into the holiday mood.
Then there is that peaceful time we spend detangling Christmas lights. Oh, the joy of pulling out a strand and finding out half the lights don’t work, so you ball it up and toss it back in the bin so it can piss you off next year. It doesn’t take long before morale is low, the caffeine has worn off, and I consider just throwing the whole knot at the tree and calling it a day. To stay in the mood, Bill captures the holiday spirit by saying “Jesus Christ” over and over while I sing a little made-up holiday song to myself. It goes like this: “F-ck you, you f-cking Christmas lights, you f-cking f-cks…and a one and a two…”
Of course, there are times we recall happy memories. Like the year when Justin was in kindergarten and wanted to help decorate—which was great because having it take three more hours was exactly what Bill and I were hoping for—and the way Justin decorated the heck out of the small lower left section of our Christmas tree, and a few branches were ready to snap off from the weight of 30585737 ornaments.
Oh, the nostalgia of Christmases past! Speaking of nostalgia, one of the great parts about Christmas decorating is recalling the backstory of every Christmas ornament and feeling a bit dewy-eyed as you remember the happy memories. It goes something like this:
ME: Oh, look! I remember when we bought these candy cane ornaments in Smicksburg the first year we were married. I had on my red snowflake sweater, and it started snowing. Then we walked to the pie shop across the street, had hot chocolate, and shared a dessert. That was the best apple pie I ever ate, and those were the first ornaments we put on our first Christmas tree. Heart, Heart, Kiss, Kiss.
BILL: I want to watch football.
Will my marriage end because of Christmas decorating? Possibly.
Oh, you know I’m kidding. I love Christmas! I enjoy every minute of the over-eating, over-drinking, over-partying, and together time with family and friends as we bask in the love and kindness this season brings. Before you know it, we will have to tear that shit down and play the adult version of Tetris, trying to fit it back into the boxes it came in, and another year will be gone in this wonderful life we all share.
I remind myself: Slow down. Breathe. Relax. Enjoy
I hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season, my internet and blog-reading friends! How about a few pictures of Christmases past?
We spent Christmas 2017 on a cruise. I think this was a stop in the Virgin Islands, although I don’t remember. What I do remember is how much fun and how hard the three of us laughed that week.
I’m slightly embarrassed to post this picture. It is Justin’s first Christmas in 1993. I’m sitting beside my very young mother, who I think looks younger than me, and OMG, what’s the deal with my hair?
This is a blurry picture of Hank the Bear. Hank was Justin’s favorite toy when he was little. The first year he got Hank we started a tradition of posing him with the Christmas presents before opening them. We still do that to this day because…I don’t know…we’re weird.
The Christmas Turkey Carcass started as a joke one Thanksgiving in the 1980s when someone asked Aunt Rita if she would save the turkey carcass and make a craft out of it. Never underestimate Aunt Rita and her crafting ability! She cleaned it, spray-painted it gold, and made it into a Sanda sleigh.
Through the years, the turkey carcass has been passed around the family. The person who received it had to add a Christmas item to the scene - a little tree, a snowman, etc - and pass it on to someone else the next year.