Now You See It, Now You Don't

The Christmas tree ended its nearly two month stint in the living room today. I was excited about the getting the space back even though I knew it would most likely become the home of some of the larger new toy items. As it turns out, I got so used to seeing the artificial shrubbery there that the living room now looks a bit bland without it. I’ll re-adjust.

It took quite some time to disassemble the tree; I am now an ardent supporter of umbrella-style Christmas trees. You know, the kind that you hold by the post and kinda shake open. Those kinds of trees are much easier to get back into the box. And there is none of that standing around and de-fluffing each individual bough. Ugh. So many PVC needles fell off of the tree that I’m projecting it will be reduced to bare metal needle-less branches in five years.

Isn’t it funny how putting the Christmas tree up in preparation for the holiday is looked forward to while taking it down just seems like another chore? When putting it up there is Christmas music in the background, hot cocoa to drink, and if one can manage the lights without too much trouble a general feeling of goodwill prevails; by the time it comes down one more rendition of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” would be one too many, black tea has replaced the much too sugary hot cocoa, and one just wants to get the job done as quickly as possible.

However, one must look at the bright side of things during these types of time-consuming, mind-numbing chores. My bright side was that although I had to remove each individual bough from the center post, I could just allow the strands of white lights to fall to the floor as the rows of branches were removed and simply unwind them from the post afterward and bundle them up for storage. Considering the fact that our tree was mashed into an un-navigable corner this was a good thing.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is going to be to find a way to turn the un-decorating into an event the whole family looks forward to. Lord only knows how I’m going to do that, but I am certainly going to give it a shot. Maybe I can find some misplaced holiday cheer mixed in with the cheerios and the four hundred and sixty-eight faux fir needles that found their way underneath the couch cushions.