Ah, the decorating for Christmas. Nothing speaks more to who you are as a person, not to mention your familial skills, than how you handle the annual tradition of turning your home into a holiday extravaganza. Most see it as a festive, joyous occasion that lets family come together and bond. Hooray!
OR … a complete disaster when everything goes wrong and two lizards get loose in the house. Because … yeah … 2020. Booo! But I imagine these are common events as people dress up their domiciles for the holidays. How many of these traditions did you cross off your to-do list this year?
• Only in Florida do you get lizards perched atop a Christmas tree like the traditional star, or maybe even a Baby Jesus. In other parts of the country you might worry about snow or leaves or even squirrels getting lodged into your tree. But Floridians have to think about shaking out reptiles. I didn’t, so we ended up with two of the little buggers running around and needing to be corralled. “Oh, just leave him,” my daughter pleaded. “Look how majestic he looks up there surveying the land.”
• Then there are the Christmas tree lights that don’t light. That’s OK. Nothing lasts forever, and thank goodness they supplied extra bulbs and fuses. But I ask you this: In all your years of Christmas decorating, have you ever got a string of lights to spring back to life thanks to extra bulbs and fuses? I never have. I immediately turn to the fuses, always thinking, “Hey. I’m Mr. Fixit. I’ll save the day because I know stuff and my family will celebrate me as a hero!” What I don’t know is that replacing fuses that are about the size of dust mites requires the same kind of microsurgery equipment found only in the top hospitals.
And if by some miracle you’re able to get the fuse out of the little plug compartment, good luck getting a new one back in. Because the fuse compartment magically morphs into a different shape and size that makes it impossible to get the same-sized fuse back in. Not that you know which fuse is good anymore, because you mixed the bad ones in with the good ones. Not to worry: Any minute now someone will scream, “Oh no … another lizard! Get a plastic cup!” and save you from scorn and embarrassment.
• What’s worse: The 10 times you almost toppled down the attic stairs carrying plastic boxes of Christmas ornaments? Or, the 10 holiday-inappropriate, way-out-of-bounds things you yelled as you nearly toppled down the attic stairs? Most of mine outbursts were some variation of, “Why in the bling-blangety-blang do we have a bag of fish tank rocks when we don’t have a bling-blangin fish!?!”
• Why is it someone always misinterprets this holiday-inappropriate language and calls back, “Did you say we can get a fish?!?”
• That magical feeling of tracking Christmas tree sap all over the house. It’s on your shoes. It’s on your hands, and therefore everything your hands touched. And even more magical is the fact that you can’t blame this quickly-spreading mess on anyone but yourself because you expressly told your family: “NO ONE touches the tree but me because you clowns always get tree sap all over the house!”
• The obligatory Elf on the Shelf tradition as it plays out with a 14-year-old:
Me: So … uh, Elf on the Shelf is back, huh? Did you find her this morning?
Daughter: Yup …
Me: Awesome! Great! So … um, just curious: Did you at all think to yourself, “Boy, I don’t know. This sure looks like someone was told early this morning to hurry up and move the Elf, and then they just went and jammed it behind the hutch?”
Daughter: Yup …
Me: That’s what I was afraid of. OK, good talk.
• How, by some estimates, you own 73,000 extension chords of varying lengths, gauges and weather-appropriateness. But come Christmas-time, you can’t find a single one of them.
• How your wife doesn’t consider “The Mandalorian” holiday appropriate or festive enough while decorating the tree. Which means you get that lesser-known Charlie Brown Christmas special, and have to wait another day to see what happens to Baby Yoda.
• How the inside porch cat becomes mesmerized at the lights on the Christmas tree and decides this towering, shimmering decoration must be some kind of tribute erected solely to him. As such, he determines he will show his satisfaction by creating a nest amongst the red velvet tree skirt. Which wouldn’t be so bad if he would also be willing to rid the house of lizards that come climbing down out of the tree. But power has gone to the porch cat’s head, and he can’t be bothered with trivial, Florida traditions like that.