I was over at The Bloggess just now and although her post is about cat thumbs it is also about Christmas decorations. [BTW, she is ridiculously funny and brilliantly inappropriate, read her.] I’ve never had a cat with thumbs but my grandmother does, that particular cat also sits up like a kangaroo on her back haunches most of the time. Are you completely lost and confused yet, wasn’t I talking about Christmas?
Anyway, the post reminded my about how my mother completely boycotted taking down the Christmas tree for ALL of 2010….December 2009-January 2011 to be exact.
As a bit of background, we always had a big fat real tree growing up. It is just what you did in Philadelphia.
(He looks short because he is so round but seriously, probably about 9 or 10 feet tall.)
We would drive hours out to the tree farm [or quickly over to the Fire Station…] and pick out the biggest one we could fit in the mini-van, decorate it a couple days before x-mas and leave it up well into January [see RJ, it isn’t entirely my fault I leave x-mas decorations up for ages, it’s the way I was raised].
Since moving to Oz I now own at least 3 table top sized fake ones since we never seem to remember which box the one from the previous year got packed away in. It makes me feel uncomfortable, trees shouldn’t be green because they are covered in glitter, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. But at least we got a real one this past year, a bit charlie brown, but the crisp, ever-greeny smell every time I walked in the door more than made up for the slightly saggy branch tips.
So 2009 was the first time Mom ever had a fake tree [bought for probably less than the x-mas turkey costs from the city block sized evil corporation store my brother hates her shopping in] and since it wasn’t shedding needles, what’s the point in packing it up and putting it away, right? My thoughts exactly.
The decorations did get taken down but the lights stayed on and at some stage her sister decided that it needed to be a bit more seasonably relevant, subsequently decorated it with little butterflies and flowers, and it became a summer tree. You have no idea how excited I was that there was a pseudo x-mas tree up when we were there in September.
Full photo credit to my incredibly talented cousin
Mom decided this year that the tree should be responsibly put away some time in January like the rest of the world, I was enormously disappointed. If we decide to go over later in the year maybe I’ll make her put it back up…..
If you remind me (you know I won’t remember), I will put it up when you are here this summer….assuming you are ….that is NOT suppose to make you feel guilty….REALLY