There are about 16 boxes sitting in my living room. One was the one that is my Martha Stewart christmas tree’s home for 11 months out of the year, and the others are the ones that encapsulate all of the christmas cheer this house will embody for the next three-quarters of a month. There are tons of gimmicky little dish towels with an embroidered santa, close to a thousand bulbs missing that incredibly important paper-clip-adjacent hook so they can be comfortably hung on the branch of my plastic tree, and a plethora of goods that are set around the house to invoke the spirit of christmas - like a polar bear in a red sweater that we have sitting at the entrance to our Kitchen. It is these little artifacts that live in the garage for most of their lives that somehow enhance our little christmas experience for what seems to be a consistently shorter time every year. The fake snowflakes and yard after yard of slivers of tinsel - that we find hiding in our carpet well into April - are hung for only a month but somehow it is a ritual redecoration that we seem to do every year.

There is a fascination with the ritualistic aspect of preparing for christmas. Whilst unboxing ornaments with my mother a few days ago, the TV was set to the classic jazz christmas music that I grew up listening to. She sprayed Bath & Body Works air freshener - Spiced Cider scent - in the room because it smelled like ‘Christmas’. We slowly took out box after box of ornaments, reminiscing about the holiday seasons past that have delivered some remarkably unique ornaments. It is almost traditional for there to be a yearly ornament with our name on it. This, to me, feels like an optimists countdown. It celebrates every year that I have celebrated a christmas. Ideally, when I’m 80 and have 80 “Kyle” ornaments to put on what I’m assuming will be a tree made of holograms and antigravity, I will be able to look at each one and think, “Oh that’s right. I did celebrate christmas in 2011.” Some other ornaments to mention are one I made when I was 5 comprised of tongue depressors, star macaroni, gold spray paint, and a photo of me in my Kindergarten classroom. I’m wearing a tee shirt with the Looney Tunes roadrunner on it - which proves to me to be incredibly christmas appropriate for a 5 year old who’s teacher must have said, “Here’s macaroni, gold paint, paste, and 40 minutes of grading and quiet time for me.” The ornaments hung on our tree are not only ones of color coordination and strategic planning, they are symbols of the life we have lead to this point. Each one is tied with some form of memory - and that attached memory determines whether or not this ornament should be where the pretty gold ones are, or excommunicated to the land between the tree and the nearest accompanying wall.

The process of cleaning out the boxes, decorating the house, and christmas day’s post-present-opening clean up is enough to really feel for those who leave their red, green, and white lights on the house all year long. Though I don’t condone any form of this behavior and the sight of Icicle lights in July makes me want to shove bamboo under my fingernails, I can understand that there is just too much work and not enough celebration with christmas. It’s allowed that Disneyland and Michael’s and Target celebrate an early christmas, often starting to set out santa hats and egg nog well before Thanksgiving, but for someone to be seen staplegunning or hammering their box of lights to their roof trim on the week of Thanksgiving gives them either a pretentious tendency or they’re simply uninformed on the unspoken protocol. So, where is the middle ground? When is too late? It seems as though with each passing year growing deeper and deeper into the 2000’s, we are experiencing a smaller and smaller decoration window. I believe that once december gets into the double digits, it is well time to have your decorations in full force and really show those electric companies what damage you can do. It’s a shame that there are still a multitude of boxes in my living room surrounded by a mess of morbidly breakable glass balls. I would love to have my christmas tree decorated, but I found it much more appealing to write about it.

I think during this time of year, there are 3 jobs in which I would find most profitable. First is any company that sells their product at Target - though I would never consider Wal-Mart to be acceptable by any means. I think with the Black Friday madness that this country so feverishly looks forward to, there is some money to be made hidden by two for one’s and buy 6 get one free’s. Second, Starbucks. There is no denying that the christmas time holiday beverages will even turn a Caffeine phobe to purchase a Gingerbread Latte or Peppermint Mocha. The draw of such a delectable treat, topped with any “limited time only” sort of situation really encourages the debit card right out of the wallet and the liquid coffee goodness right into one’s soon to be jittery hands. Third, disposal companies. Can you just imagine every family buying roll after roll of holiday wrapping paper, tearing it off millions of presents every year, and then all of that garbage creating a mountain of crumpled paper and ribbon that could assist anyone on a trip to the moon. The workload they must endue has got to rack in some killer overtime, holiday pay, and some form of pity money. There is no way that those guys go unnoticed as they toss our leftovers into some landfill somewhere. They get some killer compensation and that is money that anyone would take.

As I continue to rip open box after box of holiday decoration for their proud display over the next 3 weeks, I constantly ponder what will come of this ceremonious unpackaging, repackaging, and storing. Will there be a day someday that somehow obliterates the need of christmas decorations? I find that there is nothing I need more than my 5 senses to be satisfied with the Yuletide. I need to see, feel, taste, smell, and hear every part of christmas I can, because it only comes once a year, and that only gives me 12 more months to think up what will be on my “Kyle 2010” ornament.

x.