End of the Year Madness

May 23, 2007 · Posted in Rambles 

Heat MiserIt is morning on Friday, January the 5th of the new year, 2007. I am sitting in the living room drinking coffee and looking out the window at the fresh blanket of much needed snow. The frantic urgency of the holidays has gone and life has once again returned to its normal pace. Hallelujah!

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the holidays. Thanksgiving has always been a wonderful day full of good food and friends. Some years there can be over 20 guests coming and going throughout the day or there may be only a few of us as was the case this year. So far Thanksgiving has not been ruined by the commercialism and marketing that has so distorted Christmas. In fact, it is practically passed over by the entire Christmas season which, it seems, begins as soon as November 1st. Even though we live in a remote area without shopping malls, the local stores already have Christmas decorations in place before the first turkey arrives at the grocery store.

Xmas Kitty
I began decorating the house on the second weekend after Thanksgiving. It’s quite a project and the decorations seem to get more elaborate each year. In order to get into the spirit of things I get a random selection of Christmas carols playing on the stereo and dig in. First, the boxes of ornaments, garland and the tree (yes, it’s fake) have to be excavated out of the shed and dragged inside. Then the living room has to get rearranged to make space for the Christmas tree. This usually involves finding new locations for a dozen or so plants. Once this is accomplished the tree has to be assembled and ‘fluffed’. Our tree is a tabletop version and only stands about 4′ tall and it gets filled up with a lot of stuff. Out of curiosity I took count of all the tree trimmings and this is what I came up with: 81 different ornaments, 1 dozen icicles, 3 strands of multi-colored lights, 2 strands of bubble lights, 2 strands of candle stick lights, a couple of ropes of shiny beads, approximately 2 dozen red velvet bows, and a star to top it all off. As Elvis serenaded me with”Blue Christmas” in the background, I threw a velvet skirt around the base of the tree and voila’, a new hideout for the cat. A couple of glasses of wine are usually required to accomplish this feat.
Village
Once the tree is finished, I moved on to set up the Dickensian Christmas village, complete with little Victorian villagers which the cat winds up batting around the living room. Each one of the buildings has its own light bulb and electrical cord, however, unlike the tree lights, these cords don’t plug into each other thus requiring two power strips and a couple of extension cords. Add in a timer for everything to turn on and off at the same time and its a wonder the house doesn’t burn down in an electrical fire. Meanwhile, the Muppets and John Denver had taken over and the first bottle of wine was consumed. Next came the hanging of the lighted wreath in one of the windows, which required yet another extension cord that somehow had to get plugged into the afore mentioned timer. Finally, the stair banister got decked out in garland with dancing multi-colored lights, strands of shiny beads, dangling snowflakes, more bows and another extension cord and timer. Running up and down the stairs was thirsty work and another bottle of wine was uncorked.

Santa With the end almost in sight all that remained was some tidying. The empty boxes got stashed back out to the shed and fake pine needles were vaccuumed up. It was now well into the evening and a cozy fire crackled in the wood stove. All of the lights save for the Christmas lights were turned off. A final glass of wine was poured as Booker T’s Christmas album came on. I felt like an exhausted but very merry holiday elf as I sat back, enjoyed my handiwork and awaited Christmas day. This Christmas we enjoyed the company of a few friends and family as we all sat down to a fine meal of baked ham and washed it down with a seemingly endless supply of wine. Merry Christmas, ho-ho-ho and thank goodness that holiday was over. The next and last festivity that had to be attended to for the year was New Year’s Eve. Phrog and I rang in 2007 together with a couple of bottles of champagne. We don’t have TV and couldn’t be bothered with finding a webcast, so we actually missed midnight and ended up toasting around a quarter after, but after two bottles of champagne who gives a shit? Now it is a few days into the new year and I am in the process of taking down the decorations. The living room has been returned back to pre-holiday normalcy, however, there is still the garland around the front door to deal with. Oh well, maybe I’ll get to it by the end of ski season.

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