Writer's Block: Tinsel town
Nov. 29th, 2009 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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When I was a kid (aka lived at home with my parents-- this goes all the way up through high school), the first Christmas decoration to go up was the advent calendar on December 1st, which was a Christmas tree with ornaments in the shape of classic toys; you'd hang one ornament on the tree every day until Christmas. (And I had a very specific policy regarding which toys had to go on which day). Sometimes I wanted to start decorating everything then, but usually Mom made us wait at least a week. The rest of the decorations would come out all at once, and as I got older, old enough to have my anal established traditions about where things would go, I became rather in-charge about a lot of it (or would at least fix what people did *wrong*). There were the special Christmastime-only stuffed animals we'd put on the stairs or in the swan sleigh in the family room and the Christmas blankets and pillows for the couch. Dad would replace the bulbs on either side of the garage with green and red, we'd set up electric candles in all the front-facing windows (which included my room; I loved this because during December I could then read by this light after I was sent to bed :-P), and someone would hang mistletoe from the chandelier in the front hall. And of course we had stockings on the mantle and a tree. We'd take an entire weekend to do the tree, assembling it (it was a store-bought tree, with boughs that hooked into a center post) one night and decorating it the next. Tory was always in charge of the train that ran around it, when Neil was old enough we could have a train running around the tree instead of a baby gate protecting all the presents.
In college, I decorated most during freshman and senior years. Freshman year (apparently on the 8th) Carol and I (and Lisa, even though she didn't live there, lol) strung up Christmas lights around the perimeter of the ceiling, which stayed up the rest of the year. We also strung a weird green and red tinsel my mom sent me around our door in big loops that resembled barbed wire and prompted Keith to refer to our room as "Christmas Aushwitz." Sophomore year Lisa and I had orange and purple lights in our window all year and didn't change anything for Christmas. Junior year I didn't do anything at all because I was too depressed, as well as needing to pack for my semester abroad rather than be creating more things to clean up. Senior year we were already overloaded with purple lights, but at some point (by December 10th, because they're up by the time we threw our Communist Party then) Brandy hung Christmas stockings for all the girls in the suite and supplied a colorful metallic table tree that sat on the floor by our TV, which we put gifts around.
A couple years in college my family waited to do the tree until I got home, but not every year.
This year I'm in a new place, and so I don't have any established traditions. I know from digging around in the supply closet that my predecessors left me some Christmas decorations, so I should pull those out and see what I can do with them. I will be home for Christmas to my family's house in Elkhart, but not until 9:30 at night on Christmas Day (assuming all goes well), so I won't be able to help my family decorate this year. I won't even be there on Christmas morning. But I will be able to be there on Christmas, which, considering the circumstances, is frankly cool enough.
Typically the Christmas clean-up policy is on or before Epiphany, January 6th. (The last of the 12 Days of Christmas). At school, I cleaned up what I planned to clean up (or might be cleaned up for me, like the Christmas Auschwitz, which might have been dissembled by the janitorial staff if I hadn't done it for them myself) before I left for home-- and left the rest up. Freshman year we kept up the Christmas lights for the rest of the year, and by the end of senior year we had a dorm room devoted to every holiday because we kept up all the decorations. (We considered throwing an end-of-the-year multi-holiday party because of this, but ran out of time).
Interesting fact: My vacation in the US is exactly 12 days long, spanning EXACTLY the 12 Days of Christmas! (December 25th-January 6th).
When I was a kid (aka lived at home with my parents-- this goes all the way up through high school), the first Christmas decoration to go up was the advent calendar on December 1st, which was a Christmas tree with ornaments in the shape of classic toys; you'd hang one ornament on the tree every day until Christmas. (And I had a very specific policy regarding which toys had to go on which day). Sometimes I wanted to start decorating everything then, but usually Mom made us wait at least a week. The rest of the decorations would come out all at once, and as I got older, old enough to have my anal established traditions about where things would go, I became rather in-charge about a lot of it (or would at least fix what people did *wrong*). There were the special Christmastime-only stuffed animals we'd put on the stairs or in the swan sleigh in the family room and the Christmas blankets and pillows for the couch. Dad would replace the bulbs on either side of the garage with green and red, we'd set up electric candles in all the front-facing windows (which included my room; I loved this because during December I could then read by this light after I was sent to bed :-P), and someone would hang mistletoe from the chandelier in the front hall. And of course we had stockings on the mantle and a tree. We'd take an entire weekend to do the tree, assembling it (it was a store-bought tree, with boughs that hooked into a center post) one night and decorating it the next. Tory was always in charge of the train that ran around it, when Neil was old enough we could have a train running around the tree instead of a baby gate protecting all the presents.
In college, I decorated most during freshman and senior years. Freshman year (apparently on the 8th) Carol and I (and Lisa, even though she didn't live there, lol) strung up Christmas lights around the perimeter of the ceiling, which stayed up the rest of the year. We also strung a weird green and red tinsel my mom sent me around our door in big loops that resembled barbed wire and prompted Keith to refer to our room as "Christmas Aushwitz." Sophomore year Lisa and I had orange and purple lights in our window all year and didn't change anything for Christmas. Junior year I didn't do anything at all because I was too depressed, as well as needing to pack for my semester abroad rather than be creating more things to clean up. Senior year we were already overloaded with purple lights, but at some point (by December 10th, because they're up by the time we threw our Communist Party then) Brandy hung Christmas stockings for all the girls in the suite and supplied a colorful metallic table tree that sat on the floor by our TV, which we put gifts around.
A couple years in college my family waited to do the tree until I got home, but not every year.
This year I'm in a new place, and so I don't have any established traditions. I know from digging around in the supply closet that my predecessors left me some Christmas decorations, so I should pull those out and see what I can do with them. I will be home for Christmas to my family's house in Elkhart, but not until 9:30 at night on Christmas Day (assuming all goes well), so I won't be able to help my family decorate this year. I won't even be there on Christmas morning. But I will be able to be there on Christmas, which, considering the circumstances, is frankly cool enough.
Typically the Christmas clean-up policy is on or before Epiphany, January 6th. (The last of the 12 Days of Christmas). At school, I cleaned up what I planned to clean up (or might be cleaned up for me, like the Christmas Auschwitz, which might have been dissembled by the janitorial staff if I hadn't done it for them myself) before I left for home-- and left the rest up. Freshman year we kept up the Christmas lights for the rest of the year, and by the end of senior year we had a dorm room devoted to every holiday because we kept up all the decorations. (We considered throwing an end-of-the-year multi-holiday party because of this, but ran out of time).
Interesting fact: My vacation in the US is exactly 12 days long, spanning EXACTLY the 12 Days of Christmas! (December 25th-January 6th).
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Date: 2009-11-30 05:50 am (UTC)Sometimes I'm amused how some high schoolers look like college kids, but my college friends mostly all looked like high schoolers until our junior or senior year, lol.