To me, this is the most stressful time of the year. Thanksgiving is over and all the fall decorations have been taken down, boxed, and stored for another twelve months. As the Thanksgiving boxes go back into the garage, the Christmas boxes get dragged into the house and unpacked. There is no break between the holidays. As soon as one ends, it is time to scramble to get ready for the next one.
Lights, tree, figurines, and garlands all need to be dusted off and strewn around the house to make a more festive atmosphere. If this fails to happen, we risk appearing as if we have insufficient holiday spirit. This isn’t such a problem for me. My annual levels of holiday spirit have historically been low, and I don’t care who figures it out. My wife, however, insists we make the effort every year to celebrate properly.
Hence, the stress.
For the four or five weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I feel as if I am in constant motion. I am dragging heavy decorations to and from the garage, putting up lights inside and outside the house, searching for appropriate gifts for family members, and attending gatherings and holiday events I have unsuccessfully attempted to avoid.
It wasn’t always like this. I didn’t used to mind this time of year. Of course, that was before I got married and had children. When it was just me, I could stay home and only do the things I wanted to do. I didn’t have to be anywhere or try to impress anyone. I had no obligations. If I felt like it, I could sit on the couch, watch television, and eat cheesecake with a pair of chopsticks.
For clarification: the cheesecake was leftover from Thanksgiving and was the only food left in the refrigerator. I was using chopsticks because I didn’t have any other clean utensils.
Don’t judge me.
Anyway, now I have responsibilities to other people. I can’t just hide and ignore the world in December like I used to do. I also have clean forks, and real food in the refrigerator, so there are tradeoffs. Some things have improved. The tree is also much nicer these days. We have nine feet of plastic, pre-lit, fireproof tree and enough decorations to cover the entire thing completely.
Twice.
When my wife and I first lived together, we had a plastic tree then, too. However, it was only 18 inches tall and we decorated it with six, green glass balls and six, red glass balls that we bought from an ornament display at Home Depot. We also had a cat that thought the balls were a lot of fun to play with, which is why today we only have one surviving green ball that we still hang on the tree every year as a reminder of those first couple Christmases together.
That first tree didn’t have many lights on it, either. We had to put it on a table with a lamp right next to it for any real illumination. Our current tree not only has more lights than I can count, but my wife recently hooked up the plug to Wi-Fi, so if she wants to turn those lights on all she has to do is say, “Turn on the Christmas tree.”
Poof! Lights.
Although, to be fair, our tree was always like that. The only difference is, in the past, when my wife said, “Turn on the Christmas tree,” she was talking to me.
I wish my wife could figure out other parts of the holiday preparation to hook up automatically to Wi-Fi. I wish I could say, “Put lights on the house,” or “Pick out presents for family.” Unfortunately, those things I still have to do for myself.
With just one week remaining before Christmas I feel very behind in my chores this year. There are colored lights that are still just sitting in boxes, and I need to figure out what to get EM1 and EM2. Despite the fact they both deserve coal in their stockings, my wife insists that we get them real gifts. I suggested we could gift them a full year of living in our house without paying any rent, but she failed to find any humor in my idea.
The clock is ticking. I’m running out of time and the tension is building. In another week, it will all finally be behind us, but for right now I’m pretty stressed out. I’m looking forward to January, when we can all look back on a wonderful Christmas and celebrate the fact we don’t have to do it again for another year.
Or we can look back at the disaster that was Christmas, and the reason that mommy took the kids and left daddy. I’ll be honest, at this point there’s no telling which way it’s going to go.
But either way, it will be over soon.
Merry Christmas!
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