Dec-or-ation Time-- Come on!!

All right, so I borrowed the music from Cool & the Gang and changed the words. 'Tis the season and all that jazz.

This is going to be a pretty short-short posting today since I have several I want to get done on my other blogs before I clean the kitchen and we go out to find our tree. Yes, folks this year the hubster and I decided to get a live tree - or well, chop our own down. (I know, sounds horrible doesn't it?) Now, I'm thinking about it, I'm not sure I really like the idea. I love trees and don't like the thought of hurting them. (all right, sad moment now.)

So, it's always been a tradition in my house to put up the tree on the 11th. Two weeks out from Christmas it a good time. Not too early, not too late. We generally keep it up until New Years, so three weeks total is enough. I know when I first moved to NJ and did a lot of home care, I noticed people leaving their trees up until mid-Jan or so. I was like..."Really, people...what are you going to do, take off the Christmas decorations and hang hearts on it for Valentine's Day? Lazy asses." -- Then I was told that up here there is a large Greek Orthodox population and they leave their decorations up until the Greek New Year. (I think it was the New Year anyhow, but don't quote me on that.) - Then the Seventh Day Adventists leave theirs up until Three Kings Day. (Not sure the date of that either.) Living in the small town I did in Florida, I wasn't really exposed to much more than Southern Baptists and the occasional Catholic. So, what did I know from Greek Orthodox? Then it made sense to me. Oh, all right so all these lights on the houses and stuff isn't because they just decided to extend the season well past its best by date, they haven't finished their celebrating yet. Got it.

So, we lost a lot of our outdoor decorations in the Great Flood of 2011. Those will have to be replaced in order to deck the outside of the house, but luckily the inside is set, all we have to do is drag the decorations down from the crawl space in the loft and sort through them. Now, here is where I insert a bit of a story from last year...

Dave went up into the crawl space to get our decorations. We had this huge St. Nicholas - very old world looking. Gorgeous deep red coat and fur trim (not real fur) and looked very Victorian. It was made out of a resin and molded. Anyhoo, the face had been eaten off by mice, so he had to get thrown away. I was pretty upset because I loved that version of Santa. So, Dave goes to unpack the Nativity scene and noticed the mice had been into the wise men. Yes, folks the mice had eaten the wise men. Not a smart move on their parts. I'm at work and talking to him on the phone as he's going through piece by piece and he says..."If the baby Jesus is eaten, it's war." - I got to laughing so hard I thought I'd rupture a gut.

Moral of the story - apparently wise men are fair game, but the gloves come off if you mess with the baby Jesus.

Wishing you and yours a joyous and blessed holiday season,

-Kate