I admit it. I wasn't really feeling Christmas this year. Part of it was due to the enormous stress at work (which took care of itself) and part of it was due to the fact that we weren't really going to home for much of the holiday. It seemed like a lot of extra work to string up lights and buy a huge tree and drag 10 enormous rubbermaid containers from the attic when we'd be at Jason's Christmas Eve and leaving on the 26th. I know, I know. Bah humbug.
BoyChild's birthday is five days before Christmas as well and my parents were set to arrive that day. Of course my mother was slightly appalled that I didn't have my house in full-on Christmas Cheer mode, but I simply didn't have any time to do so. With me working and getting home late and homework and scouts and all these events like singing at the old folks home and other people's parties I'm not sure when I was supposed to squeeze that in. Plus, with all the news of the economy, it all just seemed so excessive to me. All that STUFF.
I'm a firm believer, as I've stated before, not to assume that kids want things they don't care about, to not introduce conflict when they are content. My mom kept saying, " Well, I'm sure the kids are wondering where the tree is." Actually, no. They never asked. Don't get me wrong, they made lists of gifts and had some definite opinions on what they wanted. But no one ever said, "Mommy, why isn't our tree up yet?" Ah, the benefit of them not really having a concept of TIME.
So, a couple days before Christmas Eve, we got our little Charlie Brown tree out of the attic. It's the one that we used the year I had BoyChild in our Seattle apartment when I also did not want to deal with a real tree. I recall at the time, it was at Eddie Bauer for like $35 and we had to decide if we really wanted to shell out the money for it.
So, Drew got it down and we stuck it on a table and that was it. Voila! Christmas decor. We didn't even bother with lights. The whole event took like 10 minutes. And when we returned home from Ohio on the 30th, cleaning it up took five. Merry Christmas to Mommy.
Christmas 2001. Does this tree make me look fat? Really. Tell me the truth.
And its latest incarnation in 2008...