I have to make a declaration. I am opposed to Christmas before Thanksgiving on a moral level. I do not want to hear a Christmas song. I do not put up a decoration. I do not wrap a present. The day after Christmas, while everybody else is pounding the pavement and shelling out a year’s worth of credit card payments and Christmas club savings on Black Friday, I am working through the day and part of the night making my abode festive. Every year it gets bigger and sparklier and last year feathers were introduced.
There are a few exceptions to this rule. My mom has always requested that we submit our Christmas wish lists to her before Thanksgiving. I hit Hobby Lobby to get my wrapping paper and ribbon when it’s half off in the beginning of November. And you have to buy ornaments half off from Hobby Lobby in November because if you wait until December, the good ones are gone. I float through Red Door Interiors to decide what I cannot make it through the season without. Then I go home and spend all of November envisioning what is going to go where. And this year, because Santa is coming, I have already made a big online shopping spree and sent the stuff to my mom’s.
Christmas is my crack and I am jonesing for it early this year. Yesterday evening after work I went to the nursery by our subdivision and walked around for 40 minutes feeling and sniffing and shaking Christmas trees. I am getting a real tree this year, even though we’ll be at my mom’s for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. My little apartment tree is six feet tall. I may put it up next year in the sunroom with ornaments the boys make. In my house, the ceiling in the living room is 9.5 feet tall, so I need AT LEAST an eight-foot tree. Don’t try to stop me. And the ornaments can only be red, white or silver.
I also had to get stockings for the boys this year, which I ordered. And some bubble lights for my mantle. My mom always had bubble lights on our mantle and our piano growing up, and I want to give the gift of bubble lights to the boys.
Alas, there is sadness here. I have vowed to limit my Christmas-decorating budget this year, of all years. The year I buy a house with a banister that needs some garland and bows. The year I have a front door with windows on each side that need the same wreaths as the one on the door. The year I have four posts on my front porch that are crying to be wrapped with lights. The year I have a sidewalk leading up to my porch that longs to be illuminated with themed path lights. Or a mantle that needs a big sparkly wreath hanging above it. Oh, the despair.
And by the way, Oprah’s Favorite Things, only the best televised event of LIFE, aired today. She gave away diamonds, purses, 3D televisions, clothes, cameras, and everybody got a customized frigging closet and a cruise on the biggest cruise ship in the world. People are fanning themselves and crying. One man literally fell out in the floor. It’s the last one she’ll ever do. My dream of getting to be in the audience for an Oprah’s Favorite Things episode died today, but many of these things make it only my own personal Christmas wish list. (Not TVs and diamonds and cruises. Oh my.)
Back to my Christmas fever (which Oprah exacerbates.) I cannot wait for Friday. One week from today I will be putting up my decorations. One week and one day from today I will be loading my car down with the additional decorations in my budget. But it won’t be enough. I’ll post pictures and you’ll see them and ask yourself, “how in the holy hell does she think she could put more decorations in that house.”
One day, it will look like the pictures of Southern Living's "86 Christmas Decorating Ideas."
It can be done. Oh yes, it can be done.
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