Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Christmas


Christmas is over now and I'm exhausted. I remember when we were first married and I so looked forward to the decorating and the celebrating and just the whole holiday thing. I still love the whole holiday thing but it's becoming more and more difficult to drag all that stuff out of the attic to decorate every year and I think my age is catching up to me. I wish I had a nice dry basement where I could store all my Christmas containers, or a big closet on the main floor would be nice as well. But no - for us it's a pull-down attic staircase (which should have been replaced years ago with a newer, sturdier one) and an attic packed to the rafters with "stuff" to work around. And while the anticipation of the fun to come makes to set-up tolerable, all that cleaning up and putting away - well - that's another story altogether.

I remember when my father-in-law died, over twenty years ago now, and my mother-in-law was not going to bother putting her tree up the following Christmas. We were horrified! We went to her house and dragged everything down from her attic and put the tree up and decorated it for her. It made us feel better but I'm not sure now that it did anything for her! And then we had to take it all down again in January. At the time I couldn't imagine how she could not want to do the whole Christmas thing. Now it makes all the sense in the world to me. All that work, all alone, and no one to enjoy it with when it's done. Hummm.

I think about downsizing a lot. In fact, this Christmas I gave quite a few things away to my kids for their own decorating pleasure - ornaments, wall hangings, fake greens - but I still have plenty left to pack up again and drag back up those attic stairs.

I'm thinking next year, a little fake tree that sits on the table....(only kidding kids!)

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