On Christmas Decorations

Growing up, we had the most hideous looking shag rugs throughout our house. Shag rugs by definition are ugly, but this one was a disgusting combination of khaki, slate blue, and what may have once been either barf brown or puke green. The advantage of having such a nasty looking rug was that when the dog threw up or dragged his butt across it, you didn’t really care. You'd never notice. The disadvantage was that our Christmas tree had to be fake, because mom was not about to deal with extracting needles from a shag rug.

Our Christmas tree was one of the first fake Christmas trees put on the market. This was before they looked like actual trees. Ours consisted of a pole painted green, with roughly ten branches sticking out perpendicular to the floor. We foolishly believed that if we loaded it with lots of garland and tinsel, it would look fuller. For years I thought it was a contender for World’s Ugliest Christmas Tree, but I was wrong. My roommate, for the past three years, has graced our house with an aluminum tree.

This tree is loaded with silver tinsel branches, resembling feather dusters, which stick out at obscene angles in all directions. You can’t string lights on it or you will get yourself electrocuted. But it comes with a color wheel that shines blue, green, red, and yellow light onto it, alternately. It has a habit of mesmerizing little children. When we hang metallic ball ornaments on it, it’s rather pretty, actually. I’m growing quite fond of it.

In addition to our silver Christmas tree, we have a plastic palm tree in the dining room, bedecked with lights. We have two Sinister Santa ceramics hanging on the walls – their ice blue eyes freak me out, I tell you! We used to have a stuffed elf doll that I dubbed Chuckie the Elf, because he just looked evil. I set him lurking behind the silver tree one day with a paring knife in his hand, which my roommates took to be hilarious, and so we started a “Where’s Chuckie?” game where someone would pose him somewhere in the house. I liked to have him spying from ceiling fans or jumping out at you from the cupboards. You don't want to see that first thing in the morning before your coffee, let me tell you.

Thankfully the outside of our house is tasteful. Unlike the rest of the town. If you go to Potomac or Chevy Chase, where the average person makes upwards of two million dollars a year, their ginormous mansions have a lovely candle in each window. Maybe one of their bushes has a few white lights on it. Not my town. What we lack in taste, we make up for in enthusiasm. Some of these people must have to take out a second mortgage just to pay their electricity bills in December! I can just picture them in the store:

“Ummm…I’ll take one of everything. No, two. No, THREE! THREE of everything!”

I particularly hate the giant blow-up snowmen. I can deal with giant blow-up pumpkins for Halloween, because Halloween is a tacky holiday. Giant blow-up snowmen are not OK. I guess they are popular because this area does not, technically speaking, get any snow. Not that you’d be able to convince anyone down here of that fact. If there is a light dusting of snow, the government shuts down. If a bird sneezes, the power lines fall over, and school is cancelled for a week. Back in New England, I used to have to walk to school, uphill both ways, through five feet of snow...in May! We had to climb over snow banks just to get out of our house. We didn’t cancel school except for tsunamis or earthquakes.

Oh well. One day I will have a real Christmas tree. When I do, I may just miss the silver one. Maybe….