I think back fondly to my own clean sweep of C'mas just a day or so into 2012. In a blast of cleaning frenzy aided by my new storage boxes from Bed, Bath my home went from Winter Wonderland to Bring on Spring in less than 48 hours. Woohoo!
Each day on my way home from work I'd note a few more homes defrocked of their holiday finery. Most people use January 6th (Little C'mas or the day the Wise Men arrived to pay homage to Baby Jesus) as the C'mas décor cutoff date and this year it fell on a Friday making that weekend the local C'mas defrocking weekend (especially with the unseasonably warm temps).
By Monday the 9th the world had returned to its less twinkly splendor. No more wreaths on doors and windows, no more bushes swathed in colored lights or faux icicle lights swinging from the rafters. Instead of peeking into random windows and being greeted by C'mas trees festooned with baubles it was back to seeing a lamp or TV table decorating the window view.
Sure there was the random straggler who had their tree down inside the house but still was turning on the outside strings of white lights dripping from their rafters or letting the Santa snowglobe bounce on the lawn for another week or so but overall, the holiday fervor had been tamped down to the dreary brown hues of mid-Winter. Well, all but those two damn houses.
There are two houses in my neighborhood (nowhere near each other so I can't accuse them of competing on some level) that remain fully decked out. There are still trees twinkling from inside the living room window and the full spectrum of holiday fluff and bluster in the yard, giant nativity scenes, bouncing Santas, twinkly lights, the whole nine. I know these people are home. I see their cars come and go, I see their porch lights and bedroom lights turn on and off, it's not like they've skipped town until the Spring thaw and left C'mas to linger on until their return. Nope. They're just lettin' the season linger on well past its yearly usefulness (to line the pockets of retail establishments, right?).
In the past few days I've noticed that at least one of these homes is starting to chip away at the tree ornaments. First the perfectly placed gold garland came down. The next day there were fewer ornaments on the tree, this morning there were even fewer ornaments on the tree and the lawn was devoid of a gaggle of C'mas icons though the rafter lights and front door wreath remained intact. WTF people? Really? How long can this process take you? I can't even imagine how or why this takes so long. Aren't they sick of looking at it yet? I can only imagine them glancing over during a commercial break of The Good Wife and going, "hmmmm, I think I'll remove 4 more ornaments tonight, that'll move things along".
Assuming they decorated T'giving weekend, they are now roughly in their TENTH WEEK of living in a C'mas wonderland. It's just not supposed to last this long people. MAKE IT GO AWAY, PLEASE!
I can't miss it if it never leaves now can I?
No comments:
Post a Comment