Little bit early

Yes, I admit it's a bit early to decorate for Christmas. But, given my schedule, this is the optimal time to do it.

(And now I'm trying to remember: just when DID we put the tree up when I was a kid? It seemed like a long time before Christmas but then again, three or four days before Christmas seemed like a LONG time before Christmas when I was a kid. I suppose it depended somewhat on my dad's schedule in those early days - when he was a junior faculty member, he often got saddled with evening classes, which stunk, because he actually had one of the longer commutes. It may also have depended on whether or not my parents were entertaining people, like they did occasionally when my dad was Coordinator of Research. (It's funny how mysterious those titles seemed when I was a kid, and now how commonsensical they seem to me. And we don't even have a Coordinator of Research, at least not someone whose dedicated job is that, at my school)

I know my dad said that when HE was a kid, many years the tree didn't go up until the 24th - and at that, the kids weren't allowed to help decorate it! (That's the German tradition, or at least for many Germans it was - the adults did the tree in a special Christmas room or in the parlor, and then the kids were allowed in to look at it.)

But since I have an artificial tree, I can put it up early and not worry too much about needles on the floor or fire hazards. Though next year may be time for me to get a new tree. This one is a dozen years old and it is starting to drop its (fake) needles, and also some of them are starting to lose color. I keep thinking it would be nice to get maybe one of those "slim" six-foot trees - one taller than me - because I have a lot of ornaments I don't put on the tree I have now. Then again, where would I store it in the off season? That's always a problem.



I couldn't get a good photo without flash. There are small multicolored lights on it, you just can't see them.

I like idiosyncratic ornaments. I went out and bought the Hallmark "Fisher Price Family Farm" ornament because I had one of those toys as a kid. (We had TONS of Fisher-Price stuff. They made good toys; I remember my brother and I could happily play for hours with the various playsets. I had the castle and the farm, he had the Sesame street one and the school bus, and we shared the town, the schoolhouse, and the A-frame house)

I also put the My Little Pony repaint that one of my Ravelry friends send me last year on the tree.



I decided this year to clear off my coffee table - it had accumulated just a lot of junk - and set the Nativity scene up THERE. For one thing, it's easier for me to see it, and for another - I plan to get the piano tuned again soon, and I'd have to move it and everything. (And I also like keeping the piano lid open on the "half stick," I think it sounds better open.)



And I did my mantel. I keep accumulating snowmen and Santas because people tend to give them as favors at Christmas parties I go to. And I like putting them out and remembering the past years' parties.





I can't remember what exactly the article was about - whether it was referring to Victorian style decoration, or a Victorian-themed museum, or maybe it was something from my doll collecting magazines back when I collected dolls, but I remember an article titled something like "Where clutter is a virtue." And I have to admit it: I like clutter. Well, as long as it's ORGANIZED clutter. I like having my stuff around me and I think I'd feel kind of sad in one of those perfect sterile neutral-colored houses some people have. I like having books around, and funny little things that make me smile, and pictures on the wall. And it all comes out at Christmas where I let clutter and stuff take over for a month.

I added another thing this year to the mantel. It was a total impulse purchase the last time I was at Target - they have lots and lots of little LED decorations, and this one was one of them. It's battery-operated and is a string of little "starburst" balls, almost like what you sometimes see in 1950s era design. I admit it, on the one hand it's *awfully* tacky - it does look like a dry cleaners' circa 1958, or maybe a used-car lot, but on the other hand....it kind of makes the circuit back around from "tacky" to "wonderful." (For me, at least, there's a certain level of tackiness to stuff that makes it wonderful to me. And I love a lot of the midcentury stuff, probably because I saw so much of it in my older relatives' houses)

I couldn't get a good photo of them but here are two attempts. They change color randomly, which is a big part of the tacky-but-wonderful.





(Ack. In that second one, you can see all my knitting stuff piled up on the ottoman under the mantel. Never fear: I can't make a fire in the fireplace (it's plumbed for gas but I have no fixture in there) so it's not a fire risk)

I've spoken before of my love for the crazy, over-the-top "Griswold house" style of Christmas decorating. I can see something childlike in it: "I LOVE this holiday SO MUCH that I need MORE lights and MORE glitter and MORE decorations" It's like the kid wanting to use every crayon in the box to make a card for his grandma with, or the kid wanting to put ALL THE SPRINKLES on a cookie for Santa.

And in a strange way, I almost feel like there's something oddly brave (that might not be quite the right word) about decorating for Christmas. Something hopeful about it. It's too easy to look at the state of the world (well, if you are me it is) and feel despair, feel like human beings have hopelessly screwed it up, and maybe it's time for God to cut His losses and, I don't know, start over with the platypuses or something. And yet. Yet in all of that there are people who do good and kind things, who do wonderful things. And decorating for Christmas reminds me of that. It's fundamentally a hopeful act, I think: trying to call light back into the world by putting up lights of your own. And trying to remember the good people do by trying to do it yourself. Or celebrating it. Or something. And remembering the trust you had as a child by doing childlike things. And for me a big part of that is "going big" on the decorating.