Wednesday, December 21, 2011

My Christmas Decor (or lack thereof)

Is there such thing as The Martha Stewart Syndrome?  I'm too lazy to check facts right now.  Let's pretend there is.

Here is my definition of having The Martha Stewart Syndrome:

Your Christmas celebrations, decorations, food, traditions, sugar cookies  and any other effort you put into holiday time at your house is NOT good enough.  

Harsh, right?  This syndrome can creep up on you if you don't have your guard up.  It almost hit me this year.  Almost.  I recognized it though.  I saw it lurking in my window, judging my empty mantle and complete lack of garland on every post and railing we have.

In fact, it came close to halting me from even opening my totes, full of eclectic yuletide cheer, peeking through my blinds, asking, 

"What's the theme here?  Nothing matches!  Why don't you have a snowflake tree?  Or a vintage collection of silver bells in your hutch?  You haven't even baked cookies yet?  Did you see _________'s place?  Sheesh.  Their house looks waaay better than yours.  Don't you even like Christmas?!"

These are the thoughts it sends my way.  But like I said, it almost got me.  I have my wee ones to thank for stopping the ugly thing from actually coming inside.  It started when we set up our tree.  Our poor, little tree.  At least that is how I have thought of it for the past few years.  It looked just right in our first apartment.  Our first Christmas, our little tree in our little living room.  It was perfect.

But then we moved to bigger living rooms, and suddenly, the tree wasn't good enough.  I was still thinking this when we hauled up the box from the garage.  The MSS (Martha Stewart Syndrome) was whispering in my ear that now we had kids, we had to go cut down an eight foot Douglas Fir and flock it and get coordinating bulbs, bows and baubles to adorn it.  

But we didn't.  We set up our little, fake tree, hung non-matching, uncoordinated ornaments and my little guys loved. every. second. of it.  I was humbled and sent MSS on it's way.  You would think I learned my lesson from the Whos.  Seriously.  Christmas isn't in a giant, flocked tree.  

Days later, I pulled out my totes of random Christmas decorations and adorned my house in holiday cheer.  I unwrapped each little figurine from my $12 nativity I bought our first Christmas together.  It will probably always be my favorite.  

We've been singing lots of Christmas songs together.  Today, Sunny climbed in my lap and said, "Baby GG?"  (Baby Jesus)  She's been doing this lately.  It means she wants me to sing Away in a Manger.  

So I sang to her, the same song, four times at her request.  Then she smiled at me, climbed off my lap and went off to play again.  

We may never have to buy another bell, bauble or bulb ever again.  That was enough.


Merry Christmas.  



     

3 comments:

michael. mindy. dane. said...

a-men!

see you tomorrow. just get here already, would ya?

MrsD said...

Or, just wait until your kidlets are old enough to do the decorating, they will do a way better job anyway!! Here is some good news, the MSS only affects those that never learn the lesson you have already shared! Consider yourself vaccinated!

MrsD said...
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