Decking the Halls

We made it through Thanksgiving. I think Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday. I like the idea of setting aside a day for the purpose of expressing gratitude and sharing with the people you love. I love the warmth and brightness of autumn decorations too. By late summer, I am anxious to start putting up my autumn decorations, and it is always with a little ambivalence that I store them away again at the end of the season. That is where I find myself now, in a place somewhere between autumn/Thanksgiving and Christmas, and it is visible in the mix of autumn/Thanksgiving decorations which, as yet, remain on display even as the Christmas decor is coming out and beginning to slowly overtake it.

We have about 75% of the outside of our house decorated for Christmas, though a lone straw bale still sits on the front porch reminding passersby that it is STILL Thanksgiving weekend. The Christmas tree is up, and the lights are on it, but the ornaments have not found their way to the tree yet. That will come later today. We have had clear lights on our Christmas tree for the last several years. This was due at least in part to the fact that we bought a couple of "pre-lit" trees with clear lights on them in recent years. After having the lights on two trees fail after only a couple of year's use, each, we finally went out and bought an "unlit" tree again last year. We put clear lights on it last year, but this year we opted to put colored lights on the tree. It kind of reminds me of when our kids were little.

I wouldn't think of putting white/clear lights on their Christmas tree when they were little. This was because when I was a child, I remembered seeing Christmas trees with only clear lights and thinking that even though they were pretty, I REALLY thought the colored lights were beautiful. I can still remember, as a child, laying on someone's floor (not our floor, the floors in our house were never conducive to laying on them) and gazing up at the ceiling in the dark to see the patterns created by the branches of the Christmas tree with the splashes of color from the Christmas lights as the background for the silhouettes of the tree branches. It was beautiful. I guess I figured when the kids were little that they would share my feeling that the colored lights were somehow a bit more magical.

I haven't decided yet, but I am thinking about putting up another tree with clear lights this year. It is more work, but I think it would look nice. We have another, smaller artificial tree that I could put up with the clear lights. I am leaning toward putting it in the dining room if I do. As much work as goes into decking the halls each Christmas season, it is still kind of fun. It's the un-decking of the halls that isn't so much fun. I don't think that un-decking the halls should be a deterrent to decking the halls though. Decked halls add so much extra joy to the holidays.

Tuesday, 24 November 2009

It's been a chilly, thundery, rainy day so far, but the sun did attempt to make an appearance, albeit a brief appearance lasting mere moments.

I am behind on everything. I managed to tackle a couple of things on the "Must Do" list, but a few surprises in my planned schedule for today are forcing some spontaneity on my part.

I regret that I did not get a couple of Thanksgiving invitations issued. Life seems to be moving at warp speed lately.

I've found that I miss a few old friends. Some I suspect don't miss me too much. ::wry smile:: Ah life!