My Christmas decorations are still up.
As I type, my Christmas tree is leaning in my general direction as if begging me to spare it the embarrassment of being seen outside its proper timeframe.
I’m usually pretty good about this sort of thing. Though I’m no Martha Stewart, I like to consider myself somewhat skilled in the way of domestic goddessry. It’s just that at this particular moment, my movement in the apartment can be tracked by a trail of used tissues and drips of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Therapy Ice Cream and taking down my Christmas tree is not high on my priority list this weekend.
What if I just leave it up all year? And not in the way that my white trash hometown leaves up their Christmas decorations on their trailers all year, but in the way that maybe I can help this tree aspire to more than it ever imagined when it was birthed at the synthetic tree-making factory. I’ll bet when it was in the truck on the way to Wally World, it had no idea that it would only see the light of day for one month, max. It is my duty to help this tree meet its personal goals.
Of course, one glaring problem is the fact that I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day (more on that next month, I’m sure) and we have basically no other holidays between now and Easter. Whoever laid out the American holiday calendar severely favored the latter part of the year. Of course, I have the option to decorate it in time for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but aside from little scrolls bearing stories of victory for blacks in history, I have little to work with in the way of decoration.
Keeping my tree in my living room also poses another wee issue in that I live in an area of the city that is rich with Orthodox Jews. I’m talkin’ old school Jews. Even our Dunkin’ Donuts is kosher. I have the feeling that keeping a “holiday tree” vibrantly displayed in my window might make certain members of my neighborhood feel that I’m pushing the issue. Besides, it’s not like any of my neighbors are going to venture indoors to find that for 11 months out of the year, it’s not actually a Christmas tree but a MLKEasterSpringIndependenceDayBirthdayLaborDayHalloween tree.
Perhaps I should just take it down.
The only thing I’m looking forward to about tearing down the leftovers of Christmas cheer is that it’s that time of year where I put little surprises in the stockings so that next year at Christmas I’m greeted with money and cryptic notes from the Jackie of the past. That’s correct: I use my stockings as a mini time capsules.
All right, I’m about to be buried in the huge mountain of used tissues that has accumulated in this time I have been stationary. I have to move on to throw off my trackers. You know, in case the Jewish neighbors are hunting me down for my Christian decoration deadline violation. ♣
Hey, I made buttons today. And I think that’s awesome. Check out the beautiful stalker tools on the top right. And many thanks to this Jackie for having the only how-to that put it in terms my small brain could comprehend.
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