I have a confession to make. Someone call a priest, open up the grape vine, and let the PTA convene because this is gonna make at least one of those three drop their Bible and gasp…
SOME of my Christmas decorations are up before Thanksgiving.
I know. The horror. It gets worse. Much worse. This is a low beneath my lowest of lows underneath the lowliest places. This is lower than the things you did for a Klondike Bar. This is lower than that time I blamed my child on my fart in the grocery store. This is even lower than things I’ve fantasized masturbating with.
My Christmas decorations are up before Thanksgiving, not because I’m an overachiever, but rather the opposite. I never took them down after last Christmas.
{{Thump}} There’s that Bible.
A golden reindeer sits on my front porch where he has been all year. He made friends with the desolate herb garden container. I murdered Thyme like the Mad Hatter. The reindeer got to know Halloween’s Glittery Black Cat, who is naughty after midnight, who is still hanging out for Thanksgiving because I’m not sure where to put it. They are best friends now. It would seem sadistic to separate them at this point.
As I spiral downward, the stocking holders are still on the fireplace. I scootched them all to one end so I could take a picture of something else on the mantle for my Facebook. I didn’t want people to see my Christmas angels in July. I think I did put the stockings away in the box they belong. Someone get me a cookie.
The Elf on the Shelf is in a toybox chillaxin with Barbie and Dora. I honestly like keeping the decorative angels with the real feather wings and the adorned dress up all year. They just look so good in my living room. Nobody has to know they are CHRISTMAS Angels. Right?
But the Christmas tree still standing in my living room might be a dead give-away. The angel on the top is hanging upside down holding onto the string of a crumpled bow for dear life. I haven’t tried to plug it in since last December, so I’m not sure if the lights still work, but the gold beads and a few ornaments have managed to hang in there for the year. We did put some hearts on it for Valentine’s Day, and the kids sporadically add homemade ornaments to it. Sometimes they wrap up their toys in paper towels and pretend it’s Christmas.
What is wrong with me, you ask? Besides everything…
In early January, I thought about taking it down, but I swore I’d wait until at least Wiseman’s Day (January 6th). The kids didn’t want to take it down yet either. By the time January 7th entered the picture, I straight procrastinated. It wasn’t until Valentine’s Day did procrastination turn into a case of the winter blues of depressional suckage. I told myself as long as there is snow, there can be Christmas.
Well it snowed last Easter. By then, I was like, “He already resurrected, no sense in taking it down now. I’ll put daisies in it.”
In the summer, I was busy. Busy I tell ya. I was busy taking the kids places every day, laden with the task of amusing short attention spans, and struggled to keep the house clean enough for my mom to come over and not gasp in horror. Sort of. Not to mention, I just didn’t really give a copulating urge about the stinking tree. I take meds not to give any copulating urges.
By the time the back to school clustersuck madness was over, I had to plan birthday parties and Halloween, and Halloween… Really? Already? By then, I was like, “It’s close enough to Christmas. It would be stupid to take it down now.”
It’s not like I’m losing anything from this. We still have to decorate a tree for Christmas. Of course, now we just get to skip that annoying first step of locating the tree and go straight to the glory of ornaments.
They do say that the season for giving should be a sentiment that should last all year long.
Nailed It!
Michelle Grewe is a Mom, Veteran, Monster Hit man, Bouncer, 20 Questions Master, Semi-Professional Diamond Thief, Mad Scientist, Human Jungle Gym, and a terrible driver. She paints, blogs at Crumpets and Bollocks, plays piano badly, and dabbles in t-shirt design and fontography. She also doesn’t fold underwear, and she eats loads of gluten. She has been published in anthologies Motherhood May Cause Drowsiness and Clash of the Couples and has been featured on websites such as Popsugar Moms and Mamalode.
11 Comments
Well, it’s very green of you. It’s still green, isn’t it?
Considering my last name is Grewe and most people seem to see Greene instead, I’m always green LOL.
Oh, snap! Some years I skip the tree altogether! Last year I put a string of lights on the big tree-like plant in the living room, but it was too delicate to put ornaments on, so we had to make our own, what the heck! Loved your “Christmas tree confession”!
Duct tape. LOL
I suddenly a lot feel better about leaving mine up until the first day of spring for all those years. We get a real tree now (which forces a more timely take-down unless one thinks a brown, needle-less tree is an attractive addition to a living room) but I still leave all my outside lights up. They don’t get shut off until Spring. It’s the only way I can survive winter without going all Jack-Torrance-From-The-Shining on people.
But if I could… I would leave it up all year and put daisies in it, too.
That’s not a bad idea, keeping the lights up all winter to help decorate the world until spring does. It should be something everyone does.
I am that neighbor judging you. We have a display of halloween pumpkins (they went all out) rotting in a yard down the road and it horrifies me, but I secretly delight in checking to see if it is still there and tsk-tsking them in my mind. I am super type-a though, so a happy medium might be better. You certainly justify it well! Cheers,
There’s rotting pumpkins out there too, but they don’t belong to us. I think the neighbors think they do. What happened was I got pumpkins, carving kits, set the kids outside with newspapers and had them carving pumpkins with my friend and her kid. Every neighborhood child came by wanting to carve with us. I don’t think their parents intended on carving with their kids. So I ran to the store, grabbed more pumpkins and more carving kits, came back, and everyone in the area got to carve a pumpkin. The ones rotting are the ones the neighbors’ kids started carving. I don’t think they realized their kids got to carve pumpkins with us, so they aren’t throwing it away.
now that’s taking recycle-reuse to a new place. Does it have any needles left? You must post a picture!
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