The Prescriptivist : A very late, very Merry Christmas!

I always forget how much I love my home around Christmas!

To an outside observer, my home is the usual over-decorated conglomerate of wreaths, santas, and nativity scenes. But to me... this is what it looks like:

We are officially the only house on my entire street who puts up Christmas lights, but that sure doesn’t stop my father. Oh no. He cloaks our home in a canopy of scintillescent sparkles. It may sound tacky, and it might actually be tacky, but to me, my house looks like a genuine gingerbread house (minus the candy canes, I hate those).

We have two Christmas trees. Our downstairs tree is fancifully covered in gold and erubescent glass ornaments. The upstairs tree is ‘santa’s’ tree. This tree is hidden under hand crafted ornaments; from preschool, elementary school, and Sunday school classes. I personally have an ornament from every year of elementary school - I turned my yearbook photo into a snowman or angel or Christmas tree (why, oh why my teacher thought it’d be cute to put my face on a Christmas tree is beyond me.) We have a glittered pine cone from 1985 on that tree. And four yarn ornaments that my mother made on my parents first Christmas together.

Oh, and my little brother can karate kick the electric star right off the top of that tree.

We have four carolers sitting on our dining room table; a mom, a dad, a son, and a daughter. My mom made these at a relief society activity years ago, but I always liked pretending that they are a 'yours, mine, and ours' family and the brother & sister are aaactually falling in love while singing "Hark! The Harold Angels Sing".

We have home-made felt stockings that always hang on the fireplace. Mine is easily the best, but I’m sure all my other siblings will argue that. My oldest sister’s is a dancing Christmas tree. With eyes. And a smile. Again, why oh why are Christmas trees allowed to have faces?

Next to these stockings sits our life-long ligneous friend, Rudolph. He used to have babies made out of clothes pins… but they've moved on to bigger & better places (like the couch cushions and the toy boxes and… the trash.) And just for the record, he is a terrible rocking horse.

We have three special nutcrackers. They were once made to sing for our dear eldest brothers while they were on their missions years ago. Lemme tell ya, I don’t know what gender they are… but those lil crackers can harmonize any hymn.

There is this nativity scene puzzle, too. That damn puzzle. I swear, it took me almost eight Christmas' to finally put it together, and once I did... mom took it apart and placed Joseph & Mary & Baby Jesus back in their peaceful positions.

& sometimes even an old Christmas Homecoming Mum I was given my Sophomore year of High School adds to the mess.

Add twenty-seven people and twenty-four years of memories, and we've got the trifecta!

A Christmas in my home is filled with history.

And that’s the way I like it!

Christmas 2006