Winning Christmas

This is the year I was going to win Christmas. Our house would be just like my aunt’s house in Mississippi when I was growing up.   The house where you were afraid to touch anything.  That’s what good taste means to me—the ability to make everyone else feel that they’ve done everything wrong.  The feeling that you’re only supposed to whisper.  

As a grandparent, thats just what I wanted. Just one year in my life, I wanted our house to be so fancy it made kids scared. With awe.  

Except now I realize that the reason I used to decorate the house like crazy is the kids.  After waiting years and years and years to finally get rid of the kids, it turns out they were of some use at Christmas. 

I decorated for them.  Basically I didn’t care what the neighbors thought of our house—I cared what the kids thought!  Who Knew?  

Unfortunately, decorating is one of those housewife things that I feel competitive about. Just once I wanted to look like a catalogue with an elegant table and tree.  The problem with that is that I love red and green and sparkly and having the best Santa collection. None of which is elegant. I’ve tried to convince myself that I love the spirit of giving that goes with Santa, but secretly I just see him with a big bottle of Coke in his hand.  I associate the holidays with chocolate. Sugar coated lips, licking your fingers and throwing the crinkled gold wrappers in the fireplace—and buying stuff.  

Just not a whole new set of decorating stuff.  

I miss the kids being little, but I don’t miss the work.  I don’t miss dragging myself into the family room at 6 am to see what Santa brought or staying up all night wrapping presents, but I miss the motivation that they gave me to make a home.  Now instead of decorating, I shop for shirts they can wear to work. And I get Visa cards for the grandkids.

We got a fake tree this year.  My granddaughters were appalled.  In the sixties, when I was young, everything was political and it’s one of the few things I’ve passed down.  At Thanksgiving when I said I’d go to Walmart to get some more whipping cream, you’d have thought I’d suggested we sacrifice a baby on the barbecue.  My oldest granddaughter said she guessed they only had one grandmother now, the grandmother with the real tree.   

That’s what decorating is all about.  Secretly I’m proud of her.