Are You Decorating This Christmas?

When I was little, my dad always put up the colored lights on our house. After some were stolen, he never did it again. Instead, my parents used to hang the lights inside the house on the mirrors and around the archways. We always had big live Christmas trees.

Later though, as we got older, they quit putting up the lights altogether and they bought an artificial tree--a silver one no less that had two spotlights. A colored plate spun around so the colors projected on the tree would change. After my dad died, I found out that silver tree and those spotlights were an item that the estate liquidator was very interested in getting. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the spotlights anywhere. I guess dad did throw things out sometimes.

After all of us kids grew up, they purchased a smaller artificial 3-4 foot green tree that they decorated with tinsel and ornaments. After Christmas, they kept it decorated and Harry just took it up to the attic and covered it with some plastic bag until next year. Not a bad idea--it certainly made decorating simpler. The other decorating they did at this point was to switch the artificial summer flowers that were in mom's sconces with artificial Pointsettas.

When my mom and dad were in their 70s, even the small tree got replaced with a ceramic table top tree. I always thought it was sad that he didn't decorate for Christmas anymore but as I age, I understand it. It's just so much of a fuss and a lot of extra work. Clearly, dad was just being practical by not decorating.

I myself am not much of a decorator, but I do manage to at least set up my nativity set, sometimes my little village that my parents gave me, and an tree, mostly for my cats' pleasure.