Holiday Decorating

 

Once Thanksgiving is over, we usually start decorating for Christmas right away.  I'll have to admit that I'm in a weird kind of mood when it comes to the holiday season.  It doesn't feel exactly right to me, but I also feel like I need to make the effort.  If I do perhaps I WILL feel it.

So late on last Friday (after my in-laws had left and my son had deserted us to go with a friend to a holiday parade), I pulled out my Department 56 Little Town of Bethlehem and set it up.  I put up a few of my New England Village pieces too.  (Side note, I've always been annoyed that the New England Village Craggy Cove Lighthouse has the light in the house portion of the piece and NOT at the top of the actual lighthouse.  To make matters even more frustrating this year, when I plugged everything in, the lightbulb inside actually shattered/"exploded" and I had to throw away the lighting apparatus and "borrow" one from another building that I wasn't going to use this year.)  It looked nice (although for the zillionth year in a row I still haven't come up with a way to hide all the wires), but...

On Saturday the three of us went to visit my dad.  Venturing up into the attic to replace a furnace filter, my son found a few Christmas decorations.  We put a wreath on the front door.  We put out the tabletop knickknacks.  There was a small tabletop Christmas tree I hadn't seen before with lights on it.  I thought it would be perfect for my dad, but when I plugged it in, the lights didn't work.  So I dragged it home, vowing to replace the lights.  I purchased a small strand of lights and then found that the lights on the tree must have come with it.  They COULD be removed, but they were tied/wrapped on in such a way that it took me over an hour to untangle and remove it all.  (But I was determined and I wasn't going to give up/.)  Once it was bare, I put the new lights on (and I'll admit I didn't do a great job) and set it in our music room.  It goes on just after dusk and (from a distance) looks nice.  I'm not sure if my dad will want it or not.  If he does, it's going down with me before the holiday.  If not, it's found a home for now.

Because it was warm(ish) on Saturday, my husband put up our outdoor lights which are a total pain in the...well you know what.  He used to crawl on the roof so that the whole front of our house had lights on it.  Now he just does the overhang of our front stoop (and even that is a painful process).  Of course over the next couple of days we had gale force winds, so you know what happened.  The man is persistent!

I did my bit by putting up some non-lit decorations.  A metal snowman that also acts as a measure for snow (let's hope he doesn't get buried this year because if he does it means that we've had over 18 inches of snow) and the sign that you see at the top of this post.  I bought it back in 2020 figuring I'd use it for the year and that would be it.  Although two years later, mask mandates have been lifted, it still feels right and valid to me.  I still carry masks with me (one in my purse, some backups in the car).  When the three of us went to see a show at the Paper Mill Playhouse in October, we were required to wear them for the performance.  I think masks are here to stay, probably in a reduced capacity, but they are not going anywhere and I think that's a good thing.

My husband continued to spread the yuletide cheer by setting up the tree on Wednesday.  (It has yet to be decorated)  As I write this he is out front again, lining the walk with candy canes.  He is a good man and works hard to fill the house with the holiday spirit.  Which is why even though he is an atheistic Jew, I bought him a handcrafted "advent" calendar.  It's actually a Die Hard calendar because as we all know (spoiler alert...if you haven't seen the movie and don't know the plot...STOP READING NOW!), it's not Christmas until Hans Gruber falls off of Nakatomi Plaza.

As we head into the second week of Advent, I'm still not really completely in the holiday mood (or mode), but I'm getting there.  Like Thanksgiving, this is going to be a different, difficult and somewhat strange one.  Perhaps the best thing I can do is just let it happen.

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