For about 15 years now I’ve started my holiday decorating on the day after Thanksgiving. While other people are shopping on Black Friday I go to the cemetery with my Mom to visit my Grandma and then start decorating the house when I get home. There have been many times that my husband would go outside and find me teetering on something I shouldn’t be on, hanging lights. Not this year. I skipped decorating the house, inside and out, completely this year. Yep, you could say I wasn’t in the mood.
For as long as I remember I’ve had a real Christmas tree. I love the scent of them. I love sitting in the dark with a cup of coffee looking at all of the softly glowing lights, especially on Christmas Eve after the kids had gone to bed and all of the presents were underneath. I’d never questioned spending $25-$60 on something that we’d use for two to three weeks and then throw away. By the end of 2008, money was so bad I’d decided there would be no tree.
TJ was appalled at the idea of not having a tree and it’s only because he asked that we got a Christmas tree at all. I felt we couldn’t spare the cash to buy a real tree as we’d always done in previous years. On the 17th I grudgingly handed my husband a Home Depot gift card that I’d won and was going to use on a new faucet and said he should “go to Home Depot and get an inexpensive fake tree”. I realized after the fact that Home Depot has sold real trees for many years and I could have told hubby to buy a real one using that gift card. He realized this at the store but wasn’t crazy enough to argue with me that day. But I think subconsciously I wanted the fake tree because it would be different. Everything else about the holiday season seemed different - the money, the mood, just everything. Why not the tree? On the 20th he put up the tree and the boys and I decorated while he was sleeping.
I wrapped the gifts we had on Christmas Eve and put them under the tree. I turned the lights in the room off and sat for a while. The tree was as dark as my mood had been for weeks. Christmas morning we behaved as is usual. I was still in a funk until I received an unexpected gift from my son. (Read about the gift in my 01/09/09 article on the New Jersey Moms blog. It’s short and won’t take more than a minute or two. Click RIGHT HERE and it’ll open in another tab so you can read it. Go ahead, I’ll wait. You need to read it for the rest of this to make sense.)
Oh, you’re back! Isn’t that the best Christmas gift! And so timely too! My spirits having raised a little, we enjoyed some quiet time relaxing and then went up to my parents. I was off for the rest of the year as usual. On New Years Day I said to hubby that the next day I needed him to bring in the box for the tree so that we could take it down. He left the room and came back with the box and said “let’s do it now”. Somehow it made sense. He and I “undecorated” the tree together in an odd almost ghostly silence and packed it away. It was just one box of ornaments this year, a big change from my usual mountain of boxes and storage bins. It took fifteen minutes, a far cry from the usual two days. In repacking the ornaments I decided it was a good time to throw away the ones that were broken or coming apart.
As I tied that bag shut to go out to the garbage I promised myself that next year I will try hard not to let the ugly Ghost of Christmas Past take over again. I’m hoping 2009 is a good year and I am hopeful that I will be joined by a nice, peaceful, grateful and happy Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. And if they do happen to pass in the hall, I hope the nice ghost kicks that ugly bitch’s ass back to where it came from and it stays there.
This post was written as part of the Parent Bloggers Network’s blog blast on getting ‘Back in the Swing of Things”, sponsored by SC Johnson. SC Johnson’s new website Right@Home is full of helpful homecare articles about cleaning, cooking, home design, and family fun. It’s a very nice, helpful site and you won’t find any ugly ghosts there either.
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The day after Christmas means more than new things. It also means cleaning up and finding places to put the new things. Growing up my Dad always liked us to keep our Christmas gifts under the tree for a good week or so. We were never allowed to put our new things right away. I’m not sure why, I don’t remember if I ever asked or if I did and have forgotten the answer.
