Prepare to be shocked.
My house has been thoroughly cleaned twice in one month.
Okay, maybe not a single month, more like a four week period. Or, wait. Definitely once in that four week period and we’re at mmmmaybe fifty per cent for the second time.
Oh, the wonder of Christmas. It starts with the bizarre ritual where I deep clean the whole house right before the hordes descend to mess it all up. And then back at it when the party’s over.
But that’s incidental to today’s topic: my reflection on the recent holiday.
Even before I started undecorating, I was regretting the short shelf life of Christmas at our house. The person I like to think of as the Evolved Jeri doesn’t approach decorating for the Christmas season with quite the same abandon as would the Dewy-Eyed-Dope Jeri. The evolved persona balks at the time and expense for decorations that will need to be cleaned up in a matter of a few weeks. So, I throw some pine roping over there, toss a poinsettia or two here, and replace existing pillow covers with plaid. And…we’re decorated. I feel pretty good about it, because I vet seasonal decorating the same way I vet any design or decorating prospect: who’s going to clean it?
This year a couple of subordinate Clauses un-decorated the tree and Mr. Claus carried it out to the street. As Queen of All I Survey, it was my job to turn the vacuum cleaner into a pine needle sachet; my job to repack the lights; the ornaments, the sweet memorabilia of Christmases past and stuff it all someplace where Mr. Claus will probably trip over it.
Side note: please, for the love of all that’s holy, please please PLEASE don’t let me buy the white pine roping again. Restraints, shock therapy, anything. Make me write I will not buy white pine 500 times, which would take roughly the same amount of time I would spend unclogging the vacuum.
Anyway, as we wrap the season up, I’m feeling some bittersweet pangs over how quickly it rolled past. I miss the sweet anticipation I felt as a child, the glorious, if somewhat torturous, build up between the Thanksgiving Day Parade and Christmas morning. In adulthood I’ve become more jaded as the start of the season inches closer to Labor Day and is dominated by the Hard Sell. It makes the bustle of the season less enchanting and I’m usually more than ready to pack it in before the needles start to drop.
I say ‘usually’, because this year there was a difference. This year we were living with a four year old. I have a lot of fond memories of Christmases with four year olds, but the last time I lived with one was almost 25 years ago. Whoa. And while we lived with a three year old last year, it wasn’t quite the same. There was such an uptick in childlike wonder this year that even my Grinch sized heart expanded a bit.
I think it started with the hand-painted gnome nutcracker and then grew with every new element or decoration. Snowmen, Christmas trees, towels, night lights and a book of Christmas stickers with the go ahead to decorate the hallway with them (take that, wallpaper from hell), all culminating in the main event – the arrival of his beloved cousins, coming to stay for the holiday. My beloved grandchildren all in one place, a gang of four...building forts, decorating gingerbread houses, reveling in each other’s company, so that the house was filled with peals of delighted laughter and palpable joy. Mostly.
And none of it to do with gifts, with the exception of the day the four year old came home from pre-school with a gift for his Mom, asking for help with wrapping, because it was a surprise and “really delicate”. And then on Christmas morning, when the four of them delighted most in giving gifts to each other and their parents. One moment I was thinking, ‘if I could bottle this and sell it, I’d be a wealthy woman.’ And the next moment thinking, how rich I am, to have this in my life.
The reflections bring me to the resolutions:
First, to loosen up for Christmas 2018. To that end, I marked October 15th (too soon? too late?) to shop for good faux roping for the stairway and mantle. And then maybe talk Mr. Claus into a fake tree, so that we can put it up sooner than our traditional December 18th (it’s how we celebrate Mr. Claus’ birthday).
The thought of a fragrance free fake tree briefly made me second guess that last resolution. But then I went to toss those pine branches I’d stuck in a pitcher with water. They’re still soft and fragrant. How about we amend the anti-pine fiat, to allow for pine branches that are maintained with proper hydration? Alright then. The tree lighting is on the calendar for November 24th, the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
It will still be minimalist, but hopefully we can expand the period of childlike wonder. And the number of times the house gets cleaned that month.