Deck the Halls

Welp. ‘Tis the season to haul out some seasonal decor and succumb to the power of twinkle lights. I think this year those in the “Don’t Decorate Before Thanksgiving” camp are finally allowing the rest of us the grace to just follow our little elfin hearts without judgement. Perhaps this is a silver lining of *all of this* going on?

For those of you in the “Decorate for Christmas Yesterday” camp, this post is for you. You know who you are. The moment the calendar rolled over into November and you immediately heard the siren song of Bing Crosby jing-jing-a-ling-ing in your ears. You’ve already planned where the tree will go, plotted the arrangement of lights and tinsel, and are just filled to the brim with holiday giddiness. Some of you may have already decorated the shiz out of your house, no looking back, you’re in love, you’re in love, and you don’t care who knows it!

But if you’re someone who has been feeling the nostalgia of the season swell but haven’t yet pulled the tinsel trigger, I need you to listen unto me. 

This weekend may be the weekend and you’re making great plans to deck the halls and twirl and frolic through your living room while you blare holiday tunes like Kevin McCalister. That is good and lovely and completely allowed. Go forth and garland, girls and boys! Lord knows we need some tinsel up in here to lighten the mood. 

But.

However.

Hang on there just a minute, you cotton-headed ninny muggins.

I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer because clearly we don’t need any more of those. What I do want to be is Rhonda Realistic and remind you that decorating your house will probably not be fun. Or at least it won’t be as fun as you think and wish and hope it will be in your sweet little heart of Hallmark hearts. 

Here’s the deal, y’all. Decorating for Christmas usually involves some rearranging of furniture and therefore deep cleaning. Or at minimum some sweeping up of cobwebs. If you’re like me and you don’t want your house to look like you slapped Christmas on the crypt from the Mummy you’re gonna have to do some light dusting and/or run the leaf blower through the house.

Also, you’ll be forced to relocate Mount Laundry to a different room to be dealt with later. (And yes, I plan to just use Mount Laundry as a decoration and put a star on top, thank you to all my sweet readers for giving me that idea. God bless you, every one.)

So anyway, none of that is necessarily fun. 

Around here, decorating for Christmas feels like one of those stupid plastic tile puzzles you get from the cardboard treasure chest at the dentist’s office that’s supposed to make a picture. You can get, like, two or three tiles in place but you have to move them all again to get the next one and before you know it it’s a complete cluster that’s best left jammed between some couch cushions. 

If you’ve got kids, decorating seems like it will be a fun family activity. I mean, it ought to be. However, much like mini golf, what seems a guaranteed joyful afternoon with the fam inevitability morphs into a cornucopia of complaining, quarreling, damaged property, and possibly assault. (Yes, a cornucopia because Thanksgiving.)

What I’m saying is decorating for the holidays is awesome and twinkle lights make everything better and I am 100% for it all. But also, don’t be surprised if the lights don’t work in just the middle of the tree, and the kids bicker, and the dog is underfoot, and you start your period, and someone “helpfully” sprays festive spruce Febreeze on the trees until they’re literally dripping with the scent of chemical conifers. 

You may have to fight and get scrappy and forgive each other seventy times seven times. I just want you to know that these things are probably coming. Plan for chaos, broken ornaments, and broken hearts.

Also, you may be wise to plan for a six hour long power outage. Because that’s a thing that happened over here. Day two of decorating dawned sunny and windy, I went out and purchased a new TV (merry early Christmas to the grown ups in our house…but really the kids…and they’ll still get whatever rainbow unicorn baby glitter surprise pet it is they asked for, let’s be honest). The husband and I got the new TV in, arranged, and fired up. It was finishing it’s reboot process and we were jazzed to try it out, which is when the wind knocked out the power for six plus hours. Because 2020.

The good/bad news is that I was forced to tackle Mount Laundry. I’m happy/sad to report that I’ll have to revisit the decorating plans on that one because I folded it all in my dimly lit bedroom where it had been relocated due to Christmas. Don’t worry, though, I’ve already started another Mountain. It’s more of a molehill at this point, but I have great faith in my ability to ignore it until it either takes over the house or is lovely enough to place a star upon.

So, guys, when the power goes out and everything is unfinished, and all the batteries have died, and all of your candles have melted into one giant mass of hot wax on a plate in the middle of your table, take my advice: breathe deeply, look around, and take it all in. Look deeply at all of souls that have been left to your care. Gaze at the little hearts who spent the afternoon loudly playing with the Little People Nativity set (the one that inexplicably has 3 baby Jesuses) whilst listening to their father play his harmonica, something he doesn’t usually have time to do. Take it all in, in the candle light and the mixed up smells of sickly spruce combined with at least three other candle scents. Maybe pray a Rosary together since you’ve got the time. Take it in and appreciate it in all its imperfection and grubby goodness. Because that’s where the real holiday magic is, isn’t it? The twinkle lights will come back on. The ornaments will be hung in due time (and swept up when they’re broken). The holiday joy will happen in spite of all of the irritation, the ugliness, the inconvenience, and disappointment.

Somehow that’s just the kind of nostalgia you’ll need to warm the cockles of your heart while you secretly eat chips in the pantry. 

PS. The way we got the lights on the tree to work was that my husband literally punched the tree. He batted it around like a tabby cat, swatted it, and then buffeted it some more and the lights came on. So, you know…when in doubt, just punch things is what I’m saying. Hang in there, team. We’re gonna make it even if we have to punch our way to holiday cheer!

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