Not until December
Posted on November 27, 2007
Filed Under Anxiety, christmas, debt, holiday fun, homeownership, jealosuy, snark, suburban joys | 11 Comments
Shouldn’t there be a law, some sort of ordinance against the display of Christmas decorations before the flowers in the Thanksgiving centerpiece have shriveled and died?
Driving around town, one would think that Old Saint Nick was beating an immediate path to our doors, like tonight, this afternoon, visiting only those previous and industrious enough to have the twinkling lights of holiday debt already erected in their living rooms.
While the bittersweet berries, their yellow beads bursting forth the fiery orange of November, still grace the mantel and the dining room table in my house, our neighbors have draped spruce boughs over their front doors and have erected glaring spotlights to shine notice on expensive evergreen wreaths with velvet ribbons. Everyone around here has moved right past Turkey Day and onto Santa door mats, white lights and giant inflatable Rudolphs. I’m still trying to sell my family portions of leftover stuffing as adequate school snack while invitations for cookie swaps and Christmas brunches arrive at my door. I’m just not ready yet.
Because I am a planner, all this premature decoration makes me wildly anxious. As if all these well decorated homes house residents who have long been done with their holiday shopping and are now laughing down their noses at the rest of us, pointing their superior fingers at our barren front porches.
I know people, people I find worthy of suspicion, who shop all year, quietly amassing a heap of gifts that just need to be boxed and wrapped and shipped out come December. I’ve always marveled at this practice. Wondering how anyone has extra cash laying around with which to purchase X-mas gifts in July?
Just yesterday a friend told me about Turkey Hill Tree Farm. According to her this farm offers the best Frasier Firs in the area. “A whole month in the house with the heat on and not a needle lost.” She said I better call right away. Turkey Hill is popular with premature decorators.
After several minutes on hold, a frazzled and curt Turkey Hill employee answered my call and kind of laughed at me. “Frasier Firs? The 8′ variety? You should have tagged one of those three weeks ago,” he said as if he’d been saying this very same thing, over and over for days. He might as well have chanted it….You should have/ You should have/ You should have.
It is November 27th and Larry over at Turkey Hill is laughing at me. I’m SOL, behind the eight ball, no place to go but the supermarket for my balsam evergreen that will shed great heaps of needles on the carpet and end up, somehow, in the closets upstairs, on the bedspreads, in the litter box on the third floor. But not yet, damn it. There will be no festive holiday cheer around here until Saturday, December 1st and not even then because I’ll be in Florida for the weekend drinking Rum Runners and sifting sand with my toes and pretending that this whole Christmas thing isn’t really happening at all.
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