Don’t panic, but two weeks from today will be Christmas Eve. Are you ready? I know I’m not even close.
Our outdoor lights are up and on every evening, as of Dec. 1, but indoors, the only sign of the imminent arrival of Christmas is a couple of boxes of gifts tucked away in the spare room closet, and the English-style plum puddings aging in the cold room.
I keep thinking I’ll have time to start decorating, but first I have to do this, and that, and three other things, and the garlands and so forth stay in the closet. We don’t generally put the tree up until the weekend before Christmas anyway, but the lighted garlands on top of the kitchen cupboards say “I really am getting ready for Christmas” every bit as much as the tree does.
I probably don’t decorate as much as I used to, and I definitely don’t decorate as much as some people do. Our great-niece posted pictures of her decorations the other day, and the only way she could add more would be to add more walls to her house. I do hang garland on the dining room walls, and hang a couple of Christmas plaques there, and put hooks along our stairway wall to tuck another lighted garland into, with the Christmas cards we receive lined up on top, So far, that’s a total of one, but I’m sure a few more will get here.
I haven’t sent any cards yet, and for that matter, I haven’t made any either. Both the people who normally run Christmas card making workshops were unable to do that this year, and without their great toys and even greater motivation, I just haven’t gotten around to doing it solo. I do have cards, some store bought and some I made other years, and I should get busy and address some envelopes and get them in the mail so they get there in time. Our post office, which put a float in our Christmas Extravaganza parade for the first time I can recall, needs me to ‘shop local’ there too, even if I just buy stamps.
Thinking of decorations and cards brings to mind my mother’s Christmas decorations, which consisted of two long and somewhat dusty strings of crepe paper garland that formed an X on our living room ceiling, with a pair of equally dusty crepe paper bells in the middle. Strings laden with Christmas cards from friends and family far and near stretched along all of the walls, and usually any branches trimmed off the Christmas tree would be perched on top of picture frames, after the tree was installed in its foil-wrapped cream can and set atop a two-compartment wooden orange crate. Only the oldsters will remember those, we made make-do furniture out of them and could even buy covers from Eaton’s catalogue to turn them into vanity tables, and ours was covered with leftover wallpaper. It wasn’t fancy but it did the job.
So did the ornaments and tinsel that were placed just so on the tree every year, and carefully tucked back in the boxes after Twelfth Night (Jan.6) to be used again the following year. The ornaments still are, the tinsel, which my sister insisted on installing one strand at a time with patient precision, has been retired, and I don’t miss that task one bit.
The trees of my childhood were real trees, bought from a tree lot in Calgary, and generally in the five-foot range. We cut our won Christmas trees every year since we came north, until one year, after wading through knee deep snow to do so, we asked ourselves why and bought a pre-lit tree at an after-Christmas sale. It may not smell like the real thing, but not only does it save having to wade in snow, it saves crawling under the tree to fill the stand with water every day, which is extra tiresome when gifts are piled underneath.
Speaking of gifts, I have one to finish making, another to make from scratch and several more to buy yet. Now I just have to find time to do that, and to get them wrapped!
