Saturday, November 19, 2016

We Need a Little Christmas (or it Might Not Get Done at All)

I have expressed my love of Thanksgiving many times, including here in this space.  It is the overlooked holiday, squished in between and exponentially growing Halloween and Christmas.  It barely gets a morning before Santa Claus shows up.  I try really hard to give Thanksgiving its due, being a national tradition that unites every one in this country and a time to reflect on the good things in our lives and finding gratitude.  It's important.  I even stretch it out by having all my in-laws for a second meal the following Saturday (upwards of 30 people in my house eating and drinking and occasionally bringing marshmallow shooters to thoroughly destroy my yard and floors).  I love it that much.

But reality creeps in all too often, and practicality has to take precedence over stubbornness.  We now decorate (most of) the house for Christmas between our two Thanksgivings (including the tree) so the family can see what our house looks like for all the holidays (we'll do Christmas with them elsewhere).  That's after Thanksgiving proper, so it actually follows my personal holiday preparation beliefs.  We knew we had a open day today with good weather, so Chris put the lights on the house.  I'm not going to let him turn them on just yet, but they're up.  (There are actually many lights up around here because we have a large Diwali-celebrating population around here.)  You do what you gotta do.

What I didn't expect was for my daughter to get rabidly angry over it.  She threw an absolute fit about decorating the tree too early (even though it's AFTER THANKSGIVING for the love), and followed it up by losing her dang mind over the lights going up today.  There was sulking.  Over Christmas lights.

As we were hanging out today, I may have turned on Christmas music just to see how long it would take for Sabrina to get ticked off. 45 seconds.

My mother is laughing heartily at this, something about how you reap what you sew and all that.  It won't be so funny when I fill her stocking with actual coal now, will it?

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