Have you noticed that Thanksgiving is next week? How can that be? The Christmas holidays have been in full swing since, what…Riverfest? Goodness, I’ve got to get to Kroger. How the heck am I going to thaw a turkey out in time?
The thing I can’t stand about Christmas is it starts earlier an earlier every year. Frank Marzullo will be reporting a heat wave one minute, then they’ll cut to a commercial for a holiday sale.
But, once it starts, it never seems to end. My great-grandmother would point out houses that had not taken down their Christmas decorations after the first of the year. “That is so trashy…”, she would murmur, shaking her head. “Why don’t they just hang hearts so they’ll be ready for Valentine’s Day?” Nowadays I think it would take Dr. Kevorkian to pull the plug on the lights.
What would my great-grandmother say if she had lived to see this? The way things are going, it’s just a matter of time before retailers start keeping Christmas trees up all year long. In the spring they could hang little bunnies and when summer rolls around, tiny firecrackers. How freaking festive can you get?
The only problem with Christmas starting so early is it give me more time to worry about what presents I’m going to give, plan the meals, and fret about decorating the house. Martha Stewart I’m not.
Oh, that Martha Stewart. She and I have such a love/hate thing going. I make fun of her all the time, yet weekday mornings, I’m right there in front of the TV watching her show and clipping ideas out of her magazine.
She must laugh her perfectly coiffed blonde head silly thinking up all these inane projects. I can just hear her giggling to her minions, “What do you say this week I show people how to hollow out fruits and vegetables, poke little holes in them with a power drill, then slip them over Christmas tree lights? Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”
Right Martha. “A good thing.” “A good thing” to do if you want to rust up your husband’s power tools. That’s not to mention the great big fight you’ll get into when he finds out just before the family shows up for Thanksgiving dinner. It’ll also be “a good thing” to explain to the insurance company after the juice shorts out the non-UL approved lights you bought for 99 cents at the dollar store and burn the house down.
Every time, I swear I’m not getting sucked in again. But, soon enough, morning rolls around and her program is on and I’m sitting there in my nightie, a great big mug of Lookout Joe coffee in one hand and a pencil in the other to write down the ingredients for Martha’s latest “good thing.”
Surely I’m not the only one with this problem. There must be others caught up in Martha’s wicked little game. We don’t realize how truly bizarre those little crafts are when we’re stricken with holiday fever. All we know is we must create the perfect embodiment of holiday spirit with our own two hands! Our family and friends deserve the best. Bring the outdoors inside for Christmas! Deck the halls!
The next thing you know you’re dragging in bushel baskets full of greenery, pinecones, twigs and brightly colored berries. Only problem is, at midnight on Christmas Eve, you’re not going to be at church with the family. No, you’ll be making a $1,200 emergency visit to the emergency veterinary clinic because the dog ate the centerpiece.
Well, it doesn’t take a vet to tell me that hindsight is 20/20. The day after New Year’s I’ll be down on my hands and knees, trying to pick the outdoors out of the new wall-to-wall carpet we don’t have to pay Buddy’s Carpet for until April of next year. I’d use the vacuum cleaner, but the motor burned up when my husband used it on a boxful of spilled ornament hangers.
I had a dream last night. It was just like that Twilight Zone episode where there is a nuclear annihilation and the only person left is an anti-social bookworm who has never had enough time to read. Then he breaks his glasses. Remember? Oh, the irony…
In my dream, Martha Stewart was the only person left. She was really happy because she was finally going to have enough time to make all the crafts she wanted. Then she broke her glue gun. It was a “good thing.”
Ho, ho, ho…Merry Christmas!
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