As soon as Halloween is over, I start thinking about
Christmas. Oh, I know, we have to have Thanksgiving first, but I’m not a big
fan of holidays created solely to make people eat. I want Thanksgiving to come,
go and get out of the way so we can get on with the good stuff.
First warm day in November, I’m out stringing lights on the
bushes, the trees, the light pole, the sidewalk and along the top of the garage.
This year I used color LED lights, linked everything together and turned it all on
five days BEFORE Thanksgiving. (I think my neighbors were waiting for someone
to go first, because a couple of days later there were lights up everywhere.)
Now I don’t want to lapse into a basket of cliche here but
Christmas really is a special time that brings a little bit of magic along with
it, and I love everything about it.
I love the lights on the houses and the way you can see
Christmas trees through the front windows. It makes the neighborhood look festive
and beautiful and I imagine that the people inside are happy, as if they have
set aside their problems for a while.
I love the music you start to hear on the radio as Christmas
starts to get close. I also have a special “mix” disc of Christmas songs I play
every year.
I love the Christmas movies, although I admit I can only
watch some of them every third or fourth year, but EVERY year on Christmas Eve I
turn off all of the lights except the Christmas tree and watch “A Christmas
Carol” – the one starring George C. Scott as Scrooge. Some of the ghostly
scenes just don’t seem right with a bunch of lights on in the room.
I love giving gifts and the time we spend with family. It seems
like we should do that more often, but people have busy lives.
And I love that people I don’t know and might otherwise not
like are going around saying “Merry Christmas” to everybody and I’m saying it
right back.
One disclaimer: I used to like Christmas a whole lot
more when we had a vibrant downtown Fairmont with all kinds of stores and you
did your Christmas shopping walking from one to another, bundled up in hats and
coats and maybe even sloshing through the snow. I don’t care how many glitzy displays
they put up or how much Christmas music they play, malls are poor substitutes
for a downtown shopping area where you had to dress for the occasion. I won’t
go near one during the holidays. I shop online.
It’s called “the holidays” (plural) because after Christmas we
have to celebrate New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, which don’t excite me as much
as when I was younger except for all of the football games and the Twilight
Zone marathon.
Then finally, it’s all over for another year. I know this
because day before yesterday, it was fairly warm outside so I took down all of
the lights and most of the decorations from inside the house. Putting them
away, I got a little melancholy as I always do this time of year until I thought
about my birthday coming up at the end of January, and I had an epiphany:
This year, I’m leaving the Christmas
tree up indefinitely.
My wife and I like looking at it, we don’t get a lot of
company and it casts a nice reddish glow in the living room at night. Besides,
you can’t see ours from outside unless you walk up in the yard, so nobody’s
going to know.
If anyone does see it, I’m telling them it’s a “Birthday Tree.”
I mean, why not? Before long, one of our neighbors will be putting up red
lights for Valentine’s Day and then green ones for St. Patrick’s Day, and people
all over town will be hanging Easter eggs from their dogwood trees…
So we’re going to dance and sing and drink egg nog by the
light of the Birthday Tree. Maybe we’ll even start a new trend. At the very
least, we’ll extend “the holidays” a little longer, and that’s OK by me.
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