This is a subject that simply cannot be ignored. As it turns out people have expanded decorations to include a variety of holidays. I live in California so we actually see some stuff for St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Cinco de mayo, Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Honestly I don’t advocate decorating for any holiday except maybe the Fourth of July, Halloween and Christmas. How do you make the decision? Does it come from your spouse, the kids, the neighbors (trying to keep up). Whatever the reason we see more of it than ever before. I think it is cool and certainly it provides a way to express yourself and to support each holiday. If you happen to be in a neighborhood that talks to each other, please don’t misunderstand, I am talking about a neighborhood where a number of neighbors try to coordinate decorations for the entire block or neighborhood. My youngest son lives in a neighborhood that has competitions for best decorated house and there are actually tours that you can go on in his neighborhood. Does this enhance the holiday experience. Think about it. Several things are absolutes. 1. You have to decide what you are going to do. 2. You have to buy the stuff to decorate. 3. You have to decorate. 4. You have to take the stuff down. 5. Depending on the amount of decorations you may need a place to store the stuff after you decorate. Now we are talking about a rental cost for the storage space. What a bummer. Be a malcontent and avoid the whole thing. Don’t join in. Be a non-conformist and refuse to decorate. This really doesn’t work because the pressure is on from your wife, children and neighbors to decorate. Ok since we are in agreement that it will be difficult to ignore just do it. Clearly there are different levels. Maybe a wreath decoration for the front door. Awesome. You have met the basic requirement to acknowledge the holiday without making a serious commitment to decorate. How easy is it to hang a wreath. With Michaels and Hobby Lobby your wife and children can probably make the wreath. This is great because it is also a family activity and will save you money. You and I both know that doing a wreath is not going to ultimately satisfy all concerned. It was a nice idea but realistically you are going to be required to do more.
Let us leave the many lesser holidays and focus on Christmas and Hannukah. There is a show on TV that has been on going for several seasons where they show amazing houses with unbelievable Christmas Lights. It is called the Great Christmas Light Fight. If you haven’t seen this please watch. You will not believe what you see. Also going to Target, Walmart, Home Depot, Costco and Lowes is crazy because of the variety of Christmas Decorations. Even Christmas lights aren’t like they used to be. So many choices, so many colors, so many different ways to light them. I do have a point in this story but I want to deviate a bit and talk about the tree.
In our house the tree had to be big. It also had to be real. It couldn’t be put on a table. No that was unacceptable…those trees are way too small. When I was growing up we would buy a tree at a tree lot. Of course we were in Kansas and at that time no tree farms. In California we started a tradition of cutting down our Christmas Tree. It was a family outing. The tree was real and we all shared in picking it out, cutting it down and bringing it home. The tree was usually too tall so I had to cut off limbs and hopefully none of the top. Who wants a flat tree at the top. One year we decorated the tree and afterward went to bed. The next morning Marti and Bobby came in to our room and said the tree had fallen and was on the floor. After that happened I always wired the tree to the ceiling so it couldn’t fall. This was very annoying to Kathy and she wanted me to stop doing that, I fought that because I didn’t want to find our tree on the floor again. It was unthinkable to have anything but a real tree. What do you get with a real tree? A tree that dries out and drops needles, sap, repositioned limbs, top cut off, has to be watered, becomes a fire hazard but in the beginning you get a great scent in the house. Finally after many years….like 50 years…I convinced Kathy that we should have an artificial tree. One that would always fit where we were going to put it. Would display our tree top ornament properly. Had lights already on it. Did not require watering, did not drop needles, was not a fire hazard. It also had no scent…you can’t have everything. Also it was always perfect, unlike many of our annual cut trees. The tree could also be set up in about 10 minutes and ready for the rest of the tree decorations. Also you had no additional expense for a tree every year. Perfect look, economical, no mess, no fire hazard. Bottom line, Kathy was never on board. She started to warm up to it after about three years. We still joined our son and his family when they went to cut down a live tree. That was cool…right? I am trying to convince myself. Also real trees started getting more and more expensive…a point in favor of the artificial tree. Looking back maybe I should have not been so insistent on an artificial tree and Kathy could have enjoyed a real one in the last few years of her life. Sorry Kathy.
Now let us talk about Christmas Decorations. I have a pet peeve and it is people who leave their outside Christmas lights up after the holiday. I feel like they should be taken down. It starts to look bad after three or four months and even worse after 8 or 10 months. By that time you are sure that they are not coming down and will just stay there until the next Christmas. What about inside and outside decorations. How far do you go. Are there interior decorators for inside decorations? I don’t think so. There is a point in time when you have gone too far. We would display all the decorations we had inside and after Christmas would buy more stuff because it was greatly discounted. What this did was cause us to add these to next year. After a few years of this, hard decisions have to be made. What do you display and what do you keep in the box and what do you get rid of. One problem is that you cannot donate Christmas stuff to Goodwill in December. So it is either the trash or you keep it. Most times you keep it which means unless you get a larger house, your current house it going to get very crowded with decorations. On the Great Christmas Light Fight you see homes inside that have gone off the rails. It appears that nothing has ever been thrown away. As cool as some of these houses are inside it is hard not to think of them as tacky, over the top, insane. The family is now officially out of control with Christmas Decorations. In some cases the entire house is no longer suitable for living and has been taken over by the decorations. There must be a name for that. Some of the stuff is mechanical and then there is the Department 56 stuff. I hate them. I got sucked in to Department 56 for both Christmas and Halloween. These are things that you have to display. You cannot donate these or throw them away because they are too expensive. I decided one year to take an 8 foot table. Build a landscape with roads and mountains. Put in a train and have a Christmas Village of Department 56 stuff with all kinds of accessories. I did this once. My son Bob has the most incredible Department 56 set of tables, with a train and a village that has detail so cool it is hard to describe. detail It takes him at least an entire day to set this up. Mine was a one year and done deal. I didn’t throw away the Department 56 stuff but I got rid of the fake landscape. That was tossed after one year because I had no place to put it.
Now let us go outside. Inside you are basically showing the stuff to your own family and a few friends. Outside you are showing the world. This can become very competitive not to mention the increase in your PG&E bill. I guess in most situations you simply have to decide how far you are willing to go. We had neighbors that always decorated for all Holidays. Some of these neighbors built decorations to display. Some went crazy. I finally decided that I could only do so much. Not that I didn’t want to do more but I ended up decorating what I could essentially set up in a few hours including the outside lights. Also something that wouldn’t require a loan to pay for power. I did avoid the sound technology that would combine lights with music for a wild effect. I loved to see those and enjoy them but that was for someone else. I never got caught up in a competition with my neighbors. At one point every one in our neighborhood had white C9 lights on the rain gutters of their houses. It looked pretty cool when all of them were lit up. It was actually like we all did exactly the same nothing original or creative. Over time that started to change and creativity, originality and tackiness started to creep in. I guess it is in the eye of the beholder when something goes from great looking and balanced to tacky. There were some houses that had so much stuff in their front yard, no theme, just stuff, all Christmas stuff, no thought about colors or anything else. Lots of moving parts and so busy that you wanted to not look at it too long. These were also the people who clearly kept this stuff in a storage unit between Holidays. I think it is a red flag when you actually need a storage unit for your decorations. I believe that some of this comes from some kind of syndrome that maybe could be explained by a therapist or maybe it is just something that happens over time. I think Christmas Decorating is great. I strongly support it in moderation. I will still check out the homes that are crazy and be glad that it is their house and not mine. One last point. Now you can hire people to put up your Christmas Lights. This is a whole thing now. You can even have them do more than just lights. I don’t know…to me something is lost if you are hiring strangers to decorate your house. Enjoy all of the Holidays and try to decorate your own house. I am going to even say that is the American Way.
