When our children were young, I could hardly wait for Thanksgiving to pass so I could decorate for Christmas. Wreaths with bows on all the front windows, candles in every window. We had an artificial tree, so it could be put up and left for a month. My Santa collection on shelves and mantel. Once daughter was old enough to recognize that her birthday was right after Thanksgiving insisted that I not decorate until after her birthday, so the most I would do is sneak up a door wreath.
When we would visit hubby’s parents after Christmas, I was always bothered that my mother in law no longer decorated, to the point that on a couple of occasions when they weren’t coming to us and hubby’s sister for the holidays, I sent a small decorated potted fir tree to them. I didn’t understand. As I have aged, it has become more difficult to haul the big plastic bins up from the basement to decorate, but eldest son and his family, then later daughter and her family lived here and it was fun decorating for the grandkids and I had help hauling bins around.
This year I was very late attempting any level of decorating. I got the huge artificial wreath decorated with the hand stitched ornaments made by my sister in law and step mom, the collectible Santas and gnomes, the door wreath out and up, tiny tree decorated with Hallmark minis, and quit. That wasn’t done until at least the second week of December. About a week and a half before Christmas, we went to cut our tree and got it decorated, which gave me the incentive to get the rest of the Santas and Christmas linens out.
It hasn’t felt like Christmas. With temperatures in the upper 50’s to mid 60’s except for the ice storm, it has just been too warm.
But when I was still a work outside of the home gal, I traditionally took down the decorations either the weekend after Christmas or New Year’s Day. Since I retired, the decorations sometimes stayed up longer. This year I am already done with having it up. It is more difficult to dust and vacuum, the dogs tails were knocking ornaments off the tree with no packages under it to make them keep their distance. A couple of days ago, I put baskets, crates, low stools, and other obstacles in the way to keep them away, but that looked so tacky.
This morning, after my morning coffee, I took the decorations off of the tree, unplugged the mini tree, and brought the tree ornament boxes up and boxed it away. After lunch, the tree was hauled out of the house and off to the woods and the few fallen needles vacuumed up. The wreath on the sled on the front porch and the door wreath are down. The door wreath will be replaced with the winter one, the little garden banner by the front door replaced with a generic winter one. The linens washed and folded and packed away along with the little tree, wall hangings, and soft sculpture decorations. The Santas and Gnomes are still up, but it takes a full day to decorate and a full day to pack it up and I prefer to split it up into two or three days.
Over the next few days, the rest will be packed away for another year and I will celebrate Old Christmas in Colonial costume at Wilderness Road Regional Museum.