(Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit) We might start putting up our Christmas decorations today. I’m not sure that I’m ready yet. At the risk of sounding Grinchy, I get a little bit claustrophobic if they are up too long. My daughter can’t wait to put up the Christmas decorations, although from little girl on, she thinks that we are way too understated when it comes to lights and inflatables. I imagine that her house might end up on the TV show, The Great Christmas Light Fight. It will be like walking through the Macy’s Day Parade to get to her front door. I hope that she never loses her enthusiasm.
My favorite decorations by far, are our Christmas ornaments. We have collected them from day trips and vacations that have all held special meaning to our family’s collective memory book. Many of the ornaments are handmade by the kids, when the kids were quite young. My middle son always felt that whatever he had made at school, was a true masterpiece and he carefully brought everything home and looked for grand spots to showcase his work. One ornament that he made in preschool was a large coloring page. It depicts an angel and it says “From Your Little Angel”. It appears that he took about two seconds to color it, as only the angel’s face is colored, in a dark, scribbled blue, with little care to stay in the lines. I imagine that there was a buddy playing with Matchbox cars or something, that he was probably wanting to get to, as coloring was never a huge interest to my boys. Still, he treats this ornament as a masterpiece to this day. So do I.
My daughter and my eldest son have always been artistic so they have a fair amount of homemade ornaments to deck the tree out with too, but my youngest son maybe has 1.5 – 2 handmade ornaments, to his name. He was the kid that I had to find the “important papers parents have to sign”, balled up at the bottom of his book bag, and shake off the cookie crumbs and hope that the papers weren’t mixed with a crushed banana. So my guess is, that very few of his handmade baubles actually made the bus ride home, in one piece. It was just last year, that he came to the full realization that the tree was adorned with mostly his siblings’ creations, so at age 17, he got busy making up for lost time. He made large, obnoxious, colorful decorations, prominently displaying them on the tree, signed with his name so large and arresting, Mr. Magoo couldn’t have missed it. John Hancock would have been impressed. My son makes me laugh.
I am always shocked that Christmas decorations show the wear and tear of aging, just like everything else. I mean, we keep them displayed for about three weeks, we walk around them gingerly, as they are precious family heirlooms, and then before the new year, we carefully wrap them up, like mummies and put them back in the tomb of our our attic. Still, every year the decorations are a little more faded and dated, the Santas’ beards are little more sparse, and at least one or two ornaments get broken and become a memory of what used to be. Nothing seems to escape the aging process, even being hidden away in an effort to be preserved for eternity. Maybe that’s why the holidays are so nostalgic. They are a reminder of the cycle of life and that nothing is immune to this natural cycle. Nothing.
I can’t end this post on a melancholy note, though. There is too much good fun and laughter to be had, as we unpack our decorations and all of the memories that get unpacked with them. There is hot cocoa to be drunk and Bing Crosby to be listened to, while we do it. There is a tree farm waiting for us to arrive, to start squabbling amongst ourselves over which tree we should buy this year, to hold and showcase the children’s masterpieces. Maybe I won’t get claustrophobic if we start decorating today. Maybe it will be wonderful to be surrounded by the blue-faced angel and the Santa with the sparse beard. Maybe we should even put out some more lights this year. Why not?
