How My Kids Curbed my Hatred of Holiday Decorating (Sort Of)

Ok, I’m going to admit it. I hate decorating for Christmas.

Don’t get me wrong. I dig the holidays, especially when someone else is doing the work. I get weepy every time we go to Annual Way of Lights at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, I love Elf and Christmas Vacation and Love Actually (except for the constant fat-shaming of Natalie’s ginormous size-six thighs), and I even like shopping now that St. Amazon delivers everything to my door.

Unfortunately, when I was born, God replaced my interior decorating gene with a lazy one. Because of this medical condition, the very thought of an Elf on the Shelf gives me the shakes. It’s why when I finally make Jennifer Lopez level bank, I’m hiring a holiday decorator to go along with my masseuse and false eyelash application expert.

I swear I’m not a Grinch. There are a number of good reasons why I groan every time I have to lift an ornament.

I’m burnt out. When I was a kid, my mom, God rest her soul, was the queen of Christmas. The day after Thanksgiving, she’d put on a little Bill Gaither (I swear, I still get anxiety when I hear four-part Southern Gospel harmonies), pull box after box out of the Christmas closet, and make us spend three days decorating for the two people outside our immediate family who actually stepped inside our house.

My parents were also big dollhouse builders and collectors so not only did we have to decorate the house we lived in, but the houses of numerous imaginary 3.75-inch families. For hours upon hours, our chubby, clumsy kid fingers had to set an intricately designed miniature dining room table with a complete four-course Christmas dinner.

By day three, Bill’s voice had given out, my mom mainlined eggnog to stay away, and all my brother and I wanted to do was crash on the couch and eat Swiss Cake Rolls and watch Fraggle Rock.

Put on repeat for the next 18 years.

Holiday decorating nearly destroyed my marriage. When my husband and I moved into our newlywed abode, we were excited to buy a real Christmas tree since I never had one growing up. So we went to Ted Drewes and picked out our first Tanenbaum as a married couple with a tree stand to accompany it.

Once we got home, we discovered the base was too small so I went back to Ted’s and got the only size they had left.

“What is that?” my husband jeered.

“It’s a tree stand.”

“That is the biggest tree stand I’ve ever seen! Are we setting up the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree?”

“Just rig something up. You’re an engineer.” (Which has long been my response to most of our half- assed attempts to do anything).

At the end of the day, with a little tinkering, a little rope and a lot of prayer, our tree gloriously stood in the dining room, awash in twinkling lights and precious sentimental ornaments from our childhood. That’s until 2 a.m., when we were awoken by a crash and the sound of hundreds of memories breaking on our hardwood floor.

Did you know a tree trunk with a 6-in diameter does not fit in a stand made for one with a 10-in diameter? Well, it doesn’t. As a result, my dining room was awash in gallons of water and thousands of pine needles. For two hours, Mr. P and I tried to stand the tree back up, holding it vertically until our arms looked like they were scratched up by a gang of rabid, feral cats.

Finally, at 5 a.m., I heard the mutter – “Oh, screw this!” – and my husband turned into the Incredible Hulk, dragging the tree through our house, ornaments and all, to throw it out in the backyard where it sat for weeks, putting our redneckedness on display for all our new neighbors to see.

On December 26, we went to Home Depot and bought a 6 foot artificial tree for $10. Best $10 every spent.

Decorating makes me sad. Because I’ve also been a glass half empty type of gal, every time I put decorations up, I immediately think, “Gah, in three weeks I have to take this all down again.” And once it’s down, we have nothing to look forward to but three months of dreary weather and ice-cold temperatures.

Sure, there’s Valentine’s Day, but come on, I’ve been married 13 years. Valentine’s Day means going to Applebee’s the weekend before to avoid the crowds and the high priced menu items they try to gouge you with on the actual holiday.

Even after all the complaining I do, my kids and I will grab our Rubbermaid containers of decorations and spend the afternoon dressing up our homestead while listening to “Christmas in Hollis” on repeat. My internal groans will soon be replaced by smiles as my little girls giggle over the different ornaments and ask my husband and me about the history behind them. I’ll laugh when they give names to the Wise Men in the nativity set as always and hide hand-drawn gifts in our stockings the second they go up.

And when it’s done, we’ll sit on the couch under the twinkling lights, eat some popcorn and watch Home Alone, just relaxing in the midst of the holiday craziness.

But in the back of my head, I’m silently cursing January 2 when I have to take all this crap down.

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