Christmas Decoration Day

Good afternoon, my friends. I would like to greet you with, "Happy Christmas Decoration Day!" or "Happy First Day of Christmas!" but I was too busy celebrating that day to offer all the greetings I should like to have offered.

In my view, there are several holidays that supersede all others, Christmas being chief among them. That being the case, I find the First Day of Christmas, always the day after Thanksgiving, to be a particularly joyous occasion, certainly among my favorite holidays. On this day the Christmas decorations come out, and in discussing them I shall focus on the traditional Christmas tree. The traditional Christmas tree is not a real tree, but this does hold the traditional value of being the same tree every year for as long as I remember. Apparently, until I was two years old, we put up a real tree, but that year there was an issue with leaking water that persuaded us to acquire a fake tree. Many times we have considered returning to the real tree, but three factors have persuaded us otherwise, the first being the one I just mentioned. The second is fear of fire, especially considering the length of time between the First Day of Christmas and Christmas itself. The third is the fantastic Christmas village, which shall receive mention soon.

The Christmas tree has a base, a pole, and branches that must be applied individually each year. The base is bent and slightly mangled, and it must be wrestled if the pole is to stand straightly. From the branches, the pseudo pine needles fall off in number, making a festive mess on the floor, and these branches scratch the hands and arms, leaving festive scratches and rashes that itch with the Christmas spirit. I am perfectly serious when I say that I love it. Once the branches are applied, the star is mounted on top, which I understand many people feel should be done last. These people are wrong to trust such feelings; they have no fantastic Christmas village.

Once the tree is assembled in such a way that it looks like a real tree, it cries out for need of lights and beads. First come the delightfully colorful lights and then come strings of red, wooden beads. Lights, you see, are safer than candles, but candles do smell better. Alas, fir trees are no place for candles, whether they are real or not. As for the beads, I think they might be equivalent to the strange practice of stringing popping corn and wrapping it around the tree. Popping corn strikes me as a vulgar thing to put on something so proud and glorious as a Christmas tree, but these beads, among other stringable things I am sure, do ample justice to the aesthetics of Christmas. Now, one might suspect that ornaments would come next, but anyone like that does not have a fantastic Christmas village.

The fantastic Christmas village proved to be a bit minimalistic this year, but at no expense to fantasy. You see, the traditional Christmas tree is usually in a corner, but some furniture rearrangements necessitated that it move down the wall this year, at the expense of space around its base. Since the fantastic Christmas village stands at the base of the tree, the challenge presented by a diminished space is obvious, for over the last ten or more years a great many buildings have been accumulated. The first thing that had to be done, then, was to select the ones that would be included and the ones that would resume their places in the closet. These are those that I included this year: the clock tower, the train station, the city hall, the courthouse, the cathedral, the school, the book shop, the toy shop, the florist, the country store, the water mill, the barn, and a few houses, including one to accompany the barn. The municipal buildings and the train station are in the front. To their left are the shops, and to their right are the houses. In the back in the hills is the country, including such institutions as the farm, the water mill, and the school, for it is an old timey schoolhouse. The country store stands between the shops and the country. There are also tiny people and tiny trees to populate the fantastic Christmas village, from happy children to a happy snowman. It is truly fantastic.

Last of all are the ornaments, which generally consist of utterly meaningless trinkets, merely aesthetic objects, commemorations of memories and meaningful things, and family photographs. There is also one that never got its intended picture, but it just has the picture that came with it (which is pretty awful). I like to place it inconspicuously on the back of the tree.

Apart from the traditional tree, I would like to mention the small battalion of nutcrackers that guard the house at Christmastime. My personal nutcracker is naturally my favorite. He wears a kilt and holds a set of bagpipes. That of my brother is a golfer, clearly from Scotland. Two others are perfectly ordinary, and one is a monkey.

This is not all, but it is all I mean to relate. There are lights that go around the deck of the good ship house, livening up the river valley with Christmas spirit. There is the auxiliary tree, which lives next to the piano in the part of the house that takes itself more seriously. There are also poinsettias and a nativity to grace the mantle, divers candles and things to lurk in all places, and festive towels for drying the hands. These things I mention for a greater completeness, that the entirety of the Christmastime decor might be grasped. Lastly, we have a new snow globe this year, which I find particularly pleasing, as far as snow globes go. I conclude here, vanishing like a polar bear eating marshmallows in a blizzard.

Merry Christmastime!