“Twas the Nightmare Before Xmas”

I peered through the darkness into the opening of the cavern, only to see those familiar green and red rectangular objects of terror I’ve seen many times before. No, this was not some abandoned cave hidden deep into the side of a mountain in a West Virginia coal mine. This was the cavern of our Christmas stuff, a vast, daunting trove of neatly stacked, very large red and green totes that contained at least 6 decades of accumulated Christmas memories and keepsakes. Here, quietly hidden in the crawlspace under the stairs was my “Before Christmas” nightmare waiting to happen. It only took about 30 days, well into the month of November, to even decide whether or not to drag all this stuff out once again and begin the ever-so-time-consuming “chore” of decorating for the holidays. I say chore, because that was what it had become.

When we were younger, we often looked forward to this time of year, back when it wasn’t a chore. Back then, it was a celebration, a festive time of welcoming guests, family and friends over to sip some wine, eggnog or brandy, share lots of great food, and reminisce about past seasons, when things were simpler and happier times prevailed. It wasn’t a chore to drag our dozen or so boxes of decorations down from the attic, put up the tree, untangle the lights, unpack all those handed-down ornaments, and place them one-by-one on artificial pine-scented branches while remembering each one with a fond memory. It wasn’t a chore to wait for a clear, crisp but sunny, November day to finally get out the garland and test your weakened knees on that old, rickety ladder to once again decorate the eaves and posts in the front yard. It didn’t seem like a chore to start baking cookies and pies two weeks ahead, just to free up some time later to enjoy your holiday company.

As the years have gone by, it has become much more of a burden to go through all those totes and try to pick out some decorative things that haven’t seen the light of day in eons. Those collections of Department 56 Dickens’ Village houses and accessories that once adorned the mantle now are just too much of a drudgery to dig out and set up.

But it wasn’t always that way. We used to have a dining room hutch where we would place the buildings with snow capped roofs, their glowing windows adorned with wreaths: the village church, the butcher shop, Ye olde Christmas tree lot, Bob Cratchit’s house, the old English pub, and the chocolate candy shop… and that was just on the first two shelves. The ice-skating rink, the frozen pond, the playground in the park, and the green grocer were added, just to name a few more. And, of course, they all had to be wired and lit with 7-watt incandescent lights. There were never fewer than 136 ceramic village people, animals and street signs.

Now, if you went that far in setting up the village in the spirit of the season, then the fireplace, the banister, the bookshelves, and each of your 15 windows would have to be embellished with colored lights and single electrified candles. Out on the lawn, you had to rig up plastic Santa in his sleigh, including all of his plastic reindeers, a few scrawny white birch trees if you didn’t have any real ones, and at least one giant, green, artificial Christmas tree lit with at least 700 miniature lights and at least 2 floodlights… one in red and one in green. You couldn’t forget to place at least 3 other large plastic woodland creatures and a half-dozen pint-sized, well dressed elves along the sidewalk flanked on either side by 5-foot lighted candy canes every 3 feet apart.

No Christmas would be complete without dragging out the 10-foot artificial tree. The tree I remember as a kid was stuffed into the tiniest of boxes. Each one of the 232 branches was squashed and bent to fit in that box, and it required at least 3 hours to unbend, re-shape, and separate those branches by deciphering the color coded bottom tips. If the color tip was missing, you were screwed. Then came the lights. If you were like our family, you acquired at least 2 new strands of “whimsical” light sets each season. One year, we got a set of pink flamingos and a hideous string of “The Flintstones” lights. Dino wasn’t purple, he was lime colored, and Fred and Barney looked like aliens from the Star Wars cantina. Deciding which lights to put on the tree was another daunting task. Do you put on the bubble lights this year? Do you use the large bulbs, medium bulbs or mini-lights? Do you add the string of lighted wreaths, lighted trains, or lighted toilet bowls? Too many decisions to be made. Not enough white lights will make the tree look too dark. Too many large colorful lights will just outshine the silvery ornaments. Do you add the two dozen Christmas memento ornaments you picked up in the many foreign cities you visited over the years? Did you really cherish that Christmas lobster, with a string of lights around his claws you got in Maine, so much that it should grace the tree this year? How about that holiday walrus hugging a candy cane you got at Sea World, or the festive kangaroo with presents in its pouch that you just had to buy in that Christmas shop in Sydney? So, after an eternity spent artistically adorning the plastic pine with 44 strands of lights and 342 ornaments, you finally plugged the sucker in and blew a fuse. Now, of course, you’re required to hire an electrician to install another circuit breaker in the basement, just in case. Tell me, is it worth it now???

Now here I am, ready to tackle the totes… or not. Should I put myself through at least 3 days of rummaging through all of them, just to find that one memento from Italy I had completely forgotten about from 18 years ago? Maybe, or perhaps I’ll just go to my local Walgreens and pick up one of those little Charlie Brown Christmas trees, one with just a tiny blue square cloth on the bottom and one medium-sized red plastic Christmas ornament on it, and call it a day. There’s always next year to revisit the underground cavern of forgotten red and green totes. Best of all, getting out of having to do a chore is, of course, the best chore.

Thanks for reading my blog. If you have enjoyed this story, please subscribe so you can receive every new post in the future. Comment as well and give me your feedback. As always, be well and have a great day.

Ciao!

Lenny