My Best-Kept Holiday Secret

I am not a festive person. 

By any stretch of the imagination.

Two years ago when I hired a professional organizer, she came across a little pile of themed hand towels that various friends had given me.

“I usually put these with the holiday decorations,” she stated.

“Those are the holiday decorations.”

She paused a moment, blinking, before placing them in the corner of a shelf.

At that point, I had not put up a Christmas tree for 25 years. 

If I had found a good Festivus pole, I might have considered one of those. It would have been just my speed: easy up, easy down, no need to put anything on it or take anything off of it. Quick and compact to store.

But last year my son had seen enough of the lighted trees in neighbors’ windows. He wanted one.

I discovered that there have been advances in trees: they now come pre-lit! I was very excited about the convenience of that. And then I saw the prices….

I found a friend who was willing to sell hers for only $25. Perfect. It had only one strand of lights burned out.

It was enough for my son that it lit (mostly) up. We didn’t even put any ornaments on it. Unless you count Sam and Frodo, who gave new meaning to the term “cat tree.”

This year, Scott is dragging me kicking and screaming into full-blown holiday festivities.

He knows that there are supposed to be ornaments, a star, and “tree wrapper” (which, let’s face it, is a better term than “garland.”)

Yesterday we pulled the tree back out. Only about 50% of the lights work now.

But Scott carefully hung every ornament himself. (And thus all of the ornaments are now clumped in one little area on one side of the tree.)

He even placed a mini Christmas tree over the head of our Creepy Skeleton (a holdover from when he convinced me to celebrate Halloween). Creepy Skeleton now looks like a bit like Stevie Wonder playing our piano.

It’s all a bit more Edmund Gorey than Norman Rockwell.

But I find that I love it.

I tell myself that’s because I didn’t actually have to bother decorating it myself.

But secretly, when I watched my son climb on a stool and hang an ornament that I had made as a child, my little Grinchy heart may just have grown a couple of sizes.

And that, my friends, is a Festivus miracle…