Putting Away Christmas

 

I'm sure we're all familiar with the old saying that what goes up must come down. While it may not be referring to Christmas decorations, the same is true nonetheless. Today I got started on the mighty chore of having to remove the decorations from outside. All the hard work I had to go through a few days after Thanksgiving has to be reversed.

When I was decorating the house, I had my I pod and was listening to Christmas music. It helped me to get in the mood. I always enjoy having the lights and garland on the outside of the house. When you live in a place where the winter nights last about eighteen or more hours, coming home to some brightly shining colored lights helps to lighten the mood.

When I was a kid, we never decorated the outside of the house. Those were the days before LED lights, so each bulb drew a fair amount of power I'm sure, and they got hotter than a welder's apron. Lighting the outside of your house was something that was reserved for those who were better off financially. Actually, I can't think of anyone on my block that had Christmas lights on the outside of their homes. We used to get in the car after supper if Dad wasn't too tired and was feeling generous, and we'd drive to the better part of town where people had the money to afford the extra electricity. We'd ooh and ahh with each new display, happy to have a little entertainment that ushered in the season.

It was supposed to be around thirty degrees today, which for January in Wasilla isn't too bad. That's what the weather service said it was supposed to be. I'm not sure what the exact temperature was, but it felt considerably colder. Frankly, it was a lot more fun to put the decorations up than it was to take them down. There was no Christmas music to put me in the mood, which frankly, I was glad of. After Christmas, I don't like to hear holiday music. I was thinking what kind of music would be good to accompany a chore that I disliked, and I thought of the country song- Take This Job and Shove it.  I had visions of an unfortunate victim going in to his proctologist with a string of Christmas lights protruding from his backside. I should probably have thought of a better song.

When I first decorated, I had carefully wound the lights and garland around the banister and down the hand rails in a cheerful holiday manner, making everything look festive. After having snow blow up onto the railing of the porch and then melting and freezing again, the very act of unwinding all that lovely holiday cheer became quite the chore, as I had known it would be. Of course I couldn't very well wait until May when the snow is all gone to take down Christmas, so I grabbed a rubber mallet and went out and went to work. Finding the push pins that held things in place, I started to unwind. Then of course, the garland was caught in the ice on the railing. Not wanting to rip it, I pounded the rail hoping to bust the ice and freeing the garland. It kind of worked, but I was left with strands of bright green, red and silver tinsel still frozen onto the porch rails. It will probably remain there until it thaws out some, and hopefully the birds will retrieve it to line their nests, giving them a fashionable look that is sure to be the envy of birds in other neighborhoods.

When I was taking down all the lights and garland and putting it inside on the living room floor to dry out, I started thinking that they  must have magically multiplied. I can't recall putting up that many strings of lights or that much garland. How is that possible? I know that the male plugs fit into the female plugs on the lights, but they're inanimate objects, there's no way they could produce offspring- or in the case of lights- offstring. Oh well, I guess I have the rest of the year to contemplate how that could be. The mystery will only be outdone when I plug in the lights next year and find out that the lights that I put away working, will have entire sections that won't light anymore. Perhaps I could get a huge government grant and study that.