For 11 years I've have free reign over decorating our home for the holidays. When Bill and I lived in our first apartment it was sparsely decorated. Knowing we would be sharing our lives together, I wanted to start with a cozy home for our first holiday. Being Jewish, I had inherited no Christmas decorations of my own and being the oldest in his family, Bill hadn't inherited any yet either. Actually, to be fair, most of their decorations were old art projects from the three boys days in day care and elementary school- touching but not a great start for us anyway. So I loaded up on coupons to my favorite craft store and spent a whole $50 on decorations. They all coordinated. They were red and gold, with white lights. I topped it off with a small Charlie-Brown-Christmas tree. I decorated our first home as a surprise. Bill came home and smiled but was not nearly as pleased with me as I was. Apparently he doesn't even think about Christmas until Christmas Eve so decorating just after Thanksgiving was unheard of anyway. But he appreciated the gesture.
Years later I found out perhaps the real reason why Bill wasn't jumping for joy over my decorations. He prefers those gaudy colored lights. Okay, I admit it, maybe they color coordinated a little too well. But colored lights? No, they just wouldn't go in our new apartment and they certainly didn't work in our new house a couple of years later.
But then what about the bushes outside. Okay, that was the compromise. Colored outside, white inside. Meanwhile I had come up with the perfect display of our Christmas decorations. I optimized my $50 worth of craft store decorations, a new bigger Charlie-Brown-Christmas tree and many Christmas trinkets given to me by students (actually that's not fair- some of my nicer decorations came from students) by displaying them strategically around the living room. I wound a set of white lights around a fake pine garland, hung red and gold tassels perfectly aligned on the entertainment center and windows, wound matching red and gold bows around the ugly banisters in my kitchen and even hung the red and gold ornaments on the tree. Yes, it was bliss.
Then we got a bigger tree, moved it to the family room and had our first Christmas with the whole family in our home. I broke down and agreed to colored lights in the family room- provided we could buy colored ornament balls (red and gold don't really match with the colored lights, in case you haven't noticed). With a new charge of decorating not one but two areas in the holiday spirit, I set about buying more items, including coordinating stockings, stocking holders and more (matching) garlands. Everything has its place as soon as it gets out of the Christmas bin.
I'm sounding more and more compulsive aren't I? Well whatever, I'd like to point out that the guy who lives two streets over still puts his inflatable Santa Grinch in the same spot on his lawn every year and the people across from him still have their blinking "MERRY CHRISTMAS" lights right over their garage... just light the years before. So it's really not too different, now is it? Although if I'm starting to gossip about neighbors anyway, I have noticed that each year they keep adding somethings to their displays with apparent disregard for coordinating colors. I can compromise with mixing those colored lights and some white lights, but adding the blue lights too and/or different size bulbs is excessively clashing, don't you think?
So what's the point of this blog post? I guess I needed to vent and put it all on the line. I was a little miffed this year when Liam, who has been "helping" me decorate for 5 years now, tried to take over decorating this year. Last year he was sooo compliant. I would tell him to put an ornament on the tree and he would do it just like I asked. It was the perfect balance of helpfulness and competence without interference. But this year he actually grabbed garlands and strewed them willy nilly across the Christmas tree. He tried to hold my breakable stocking holders. He placed stuffed snowmen and Santa who says, "The magic of Christmas lies in your heart" in clearly incorrect places. It was just... wrong. Then he grabbed gold ribbon and zig-zagged it tightly around the banisters separating the kitchen and dining room. Those things are ugly enough, now I had a tightly wound mess! I couldn't help myself, I redid the whole display. I spent about 1 1/2 hours on the ribbon alone, making sure the bows were perfect and the ribbon draped equally between each banister. When I was done, I had to credit Liam. I think it was cuter than the red bows I had put on the banisters for the past 5 years.
The next night was a Monday. Liam grabbed a spool of red ribbon and proceeded to tightly wind them through the stair banisters. This is in a much more visible location but the difference is... he did this on a Monday so I promptly put off fixing it for lack of time and continued to forget about it. And I have forgotten about it for the past 2 weeks. I haven't fixed it and it's kind of growing on me.
I wonder what decorations Liam will suggest next year. Possibly he will want to put the pine garland around our window or on the back of a couch. Whatever... as long as he doesn't try to put the colored lights upstairs.
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