Be-decked

Once again, it’s that most wonderful time of the year – egg-nogging, cookie-hogging, gift-wrapping, credit-tapping, bell-ringing, carol-singing, tree-lighting, Santa-sighting time of the year.

I love Christmas. I’ve loved Christmas since I was young enough to toddle down the hallway of my childhood home on Christmas morn to a living room full of presents (at least it seemed full at the time). Of course there were few surprises amongst that pile, as I had personally made a comprehensive list of my Yuletide desires from the Sears catalog, including page number, item number, and color (if applicable). I had to be specific with Santa back then or else I might end up with the icky blue Hot Wheels Woody Wagon instead of the cool one with the tiny fake wood paneling. It could happen…

As I got older and toddled less, I outgrew Hot Wheels and began to focus on Christmas decorations, particularly the Christmas tree. Last year on “Live from the Lizard Lounge”, I detailed my copious experience with decorating Christmas trees. (The details were copious, too. Copious. Fa-la-la-la-sorry.) If you have a lot of time on your hands and could use a few continuing ed. credits for “A Know-it-All’s Guide to Christmas Tree Decorating 101″, then follow the link above and read away.

This year, I promise to be a little less erudite and instructional since, as I mentioned last year, you really can’t go wrong when decorating a Christmas tree. (Unless you’re my granny, who used to get all the branches mixed up when she assembled her old artificial tree, with the longer branches sticking out of the middle or the top and the shorter ones sticking out at the bottom. In that case, it was possible to go wrong. Amusing, but oh so wrong.)

To date, there are two faux tannenbäume decking the halls of the Lizard Lounge (if you don’t count the little trio of silver tinsel trees atop the ‘fridge and that green furry stuff growing in the shower). The “feature” tree reigns over the library/dining room/pass-through-to-the-kitchen and is pictured here in this post.

Everything on this imposing pre-lit pyramid of PVC is silver, gold, or some variation thereof (maybe we should just refer to all these colors as “precious metals”). However, unless you have a titanium card, a sugar daddy, or just robbed a bank, it’s probably not a good idea to plan on walking out of the store with everything you need to decorate a tree like this in one swell foop. The baubles and shiny gewgaws seen here are the result of 15 years of hunting and gathering, typically post-Christmas when retailers are desperate to unload their holiday decor at frighteningly low prices.

Decorating the Christmas tree each year is kind of like starting a weight-loss program – although I know it’s going to be beautiful when all the work is done and I’ll soon forget all the effort and sweating that went into it, I still dread that first step, whether it’s to take my life in my hands and wrestle the ton o’ tree box from out of the attic or to redecorate the entire house just to find a spot big enough to host it.

In the end, though, when I’ve finished rummaging through the ornament box, rediscovering the tucked away trinkets that I get to enjoy for just a few short weeks each year, have found the perfect spot on the tree to showcase each one, and can finally stand back and bask in its mega-watt glow, I know that it will be totally worth the effort vacuuming up the glitter I’ll still find in March.

Fa-la-la-la-really.

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