When my brother and I were kids, we used to sneak up to the attic to secretly unpack Christmas decorations the week before Thanksgiving. As soon as the turkey was put away, we were yanking lights, garlands, and fake trees through the hole in the ceiling, heedless of the shower of plastic pine needles and leftover ornament hooks.
This obsession didn’t fade with adulthood. In fact, for the past five years or so, my brother has decked our family’s home out so much that people specifically seek out our house to drive by. It is so bright, you can see it from space. It’s a bit annoying for the house’s inhabitants, though, because you cannot use the microwave or turn on the light in the downstairs bathroom without either going outside to unplug Christmas lights or blowing a fuse.
This is the family I come from. We are not Scrooges or Grinches (with the possible exception of my grandfather, who insists that Christmas is a bunch of hooey and yet cleaves to holiday traditions with surprising intensity).
So why don’t I have any Christmas spirit this year?
Normally, I would already have forced Dear Hubby to help me select a 10+ foot tree to strap to my tiny sedan. Normally, I would already have dug into the depths of our jam-packed storage unit to find my many boxes of Christmas decorations. Normally, our kitchen would already be coated in flour and powdered sugar and smelling of chocolate, and spice, and everything nice.
None of these things has happened yet. And none of them are likely to happen this year.
We’ve been in the process of (very) slowly packing some of our unnecessary belongings (like my husband’s ridiculously massive collection of books). It just seems sort of stupid to unpack boxes of Christmas decorations at a time when I’m in the process of packing the rest of my belongings.
Add to this the fact that we are newlyweds. We got a lot of wedding gifts not too long ago (and are still working on those Thank You notes -- my apologies to anyone reading this who was generous and kind enough to give us a gift and who has not yet received my thanks). As a result, my kitchen, which was pretty small to begin with, is now overflowing with new appliances and servingware that I have nowhere to store. Try baking dozens upon dozens of cookies in a kitchen with a mere 2 square feet of clear counter space. So not happening.
Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that it is now early December and yet it is 75 degrees outside. It’s hard to feel Christmasy when you’re wearing t-shirts and flip flops.
The one bright side to my lack of Christmas cheer: Because I’m not going hog-wild on baking and decorating supplies like I usually do, Dear Hubby has agreed to let me loose in the home improvement store after Christmas to buy decorations for next year (when we WILL have a house, dammit!).
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