Christmas decorating season is in full swing with Thanksgiving in the rear-view mirror.
For some people this is easy, because they just plug in the lights they've let hang since last Christmas and hope they all work. There is a reward in procrastinating an entire year when it comes to taking down the lights, and we've all seen a few houses where this is the case. I tip my cap to you if this is your practice, while you may have upset your neighbors for the past 10 months, you have just won at Christmas decorating for the season.
I've moved a couple of times in the last year and that has made it difficult to get into a Christmas decorating routine. I always put up a tree and a stand of three orange lights. The orange lights are a family tradition going back as far as I can remember. My mother had a stand of five orange lights and while I wasn't able to find a five-light stand, I did find a three-light stand. I think those orange lights signify the welcome nature of Christmas. I try to have both the tree lighted and the orange lights on every evening during the holidays.
Due to deer hunting, I usually don't get Christmas decorations up until the end of the first week of December. I try to take them down in the days after New Year's Day. Our family also sends out Christmas greeting cards, which is a fading, but still wonderful tradition. There were years when I wrote the dreaded "Christmas letter" and told everybody how great my life was... Then I started to get real about things such as when I had a laparoscopy, was diagnosed with bulging back discs and all of the things that make up life. So, now I don't write the letter. I figure everybody should know all they want through Facebook and if they don't do that, they can always give me a call.
Tree decorating is still quite fun because although the children are in their late teens, they can and generally are, involved.
There are some easy calls to make when it comes to ornaments. All of the historic ornaments make it - ones from my pre-fatherhood days, to all of the grade school ornaments my sons have made. And then the post-marriage ornaments with photographs and other holiday reminders attached.
What has become difficult to place are the growing number of ornaments that are for the Milwaukee Brewers, Milwaukee Bucks, Green Bay Packers and Wisconsin Badgers. I have some sports ornaments that are quite old - 25 years or so - that are for these sports teams. It seems like each year we add more. I think we'll have to put up a couple of trees in the future with one devoted solely to sports ornaments.
I do find it fun to put my Brett Favre ornament on the Christmas tree. It is in the shape of a Green Bay Packer jersey and is green and gold in color. When plugged in, the ornament brings out a photo-quality likeness of Favre in whatever color light is inside the ornament. I've had great fun with this over the years, changing the color to bright green when he was with the New York Jets to purple when he was with the Vikings.
My favorite ornaments are the ones made by my son when he was in grade school. There is a sleigh made out of Popsicle sticks. There is an ornament made simply from an ornament hanger and a plastic projectile from one of his toys that he taped together and hung on the tree when he was four.
There's a photo of my wife and I in an ornament in the year we became engaged to be married. I cherish that one as we were bringing our families together and creating a new life after both of us had been single for a long time.
My wife and I have a few different "fake" Christmas trees that we use to decorate our homes. The one I currently have is a bit small. Unfortunately, at the moment I have the biggest house. The best way to rectify this would be to get a real Christmas tree for this year and set it up in the front window.
I had a real tree back in 1996, when in my mid-20s I had a need to get a real tree for the first time. I got a long-needle pine and paid for it over the next several years as I was still finding needles stuck in the carpet. If we get a real tree this year, it will have short needles.
I've never gone "Clark Griswold" and decorated the outside of the house. I'll leave that to Christmas lighting experts who have perfected their presentation over the years and truly get into the holiday spirit by doubling their electrical bill for a couple months. I've found the best way for me to enjoy outdoor lights is to take a drive and look at the hard work of other people. A night of neighborhood driving in the car to look at the lights in the days before Christmas is a welcome distraction from the mode of "shop, shop, shop" that I can get into while I try to ensure everybody has enough presents.
By the way, last year I did all of my Christmas shopping on the square in Monroe.
Every bit of it was done in a couple of trips where I walked from store-to-store, picked out cool items, paid for them, had them wrapped and moved on... Shopping locally is nice in that I see what I'm buying in person and somebody else does the gift wrapping. That's huge for me and my fumbling fingers.
With each dollar you spend locally circulating in the community many times, it helps everyone to shop locally. Cyber Monday just passed and you may have gotten what you wanted, but once you buy something online, while you get your item, the money is out of the community and you don't have an opportunity at local service.
To those of you who have yet to do your holiday decorating, enjoy it. For those of you with cats, I hope your cat does not try to make a home out of the middle of your tree and tip it over time-after-time.
- Matt Johnson is publisher of the Monroe Times. His column is published Wednesdays.
For some people this is easy, because they just plug in the lights they've let hang since last Christmas and hope they all work. There is a reward in procrastinating an entire year when it comes to taking down the lights, and we've all seen a few houses where this is the case. I tip my cap to you if this is your practice, while you may have upset your neighbors for the past 10 months, you have just won at Christmas decorating for the season.
I've moved a couple of times in the last year and that has made it difficult to get into a Christmas decorating routine. I always put up a tree and a stand of three orange lights. The orange lights are a family tradition going back as far as I can remember. My mother had a stand of five orange lights and while I wasn't able to find a five-light stand, I did find a three-light stand. I think those orange lights signify the welcome nature of Christmas. I try to have both the tree lighted and the orange lights on every evening during the holidays.
Due to deer hunting, I usually don't get Christmas decorations up until the end of the first week of December. I try to take them down in the days after New Year's Day. Our family also sends out Christmas greeting cards, which is a fading, but still wonderful tradition. There were years when I wrote the dreaded "Christmas letter" and told everybody how great my life was... Then I started to get real about things such as when I had a laparoscopy, was diagnosed with bulging back discs and all of the things that make up life. So, now I don't write the letter. I figure everybody should know all they want through Facebook and if they don't do that, they can always give me a call.
Tree decorating is still quite fun because although the children are in their late teens, they can and generally are, involved.
There are some easy calls to make when it comes to ornaments. All of the historic ornaments make it - ones from my pre-fatherhood days, to all of the grade school ornaments my sons have made. And then the post-marriage ornaments with photographs and other holiday reminders attached.
What has become difficult to place are the growing number of ornaments that are for the Milwaukee Brewers, Milwaukee Bucks, Green Bay Packers and Wisconsin Badgers. I have some sports ornaments that are quite old - 25 years or so - that are for these sports teams. It seems like each year we add more. I think we'll have to put up a couple of trees in the future with one devoted solely to sports ornaments.
I do find it fun to put my Brett Favre ornament on the Christmas tree. It is in the shape of a Green Bay Packer jersey and is green and gold in color. When plugged in, the ornament brings out a photo-quality likeness of Favre in whatever color light is inside the ornament. I've had great fun with this over the years, changing the color to bright green when he was with the New York Jets to purple when he was with the Vikings.
My favorite ornaments are the ones made by my son when he was in grade school. There is a sleigh made out of Popsicle sticks. There is an ornament made simply from an ornament hanger and a plastic projectile from one of his toys that he taped together and hung on the tree when he was four.
There's a photo of my wife and I in an ornament in the year we became engaged to be married. I cherish that one as we were bringing our families together and creating a new life after both of us had been single for a long time.
My wife and I have a few different "fake" Christmas trees that we use to decorate our homes. The one I currently have is a bit small. Unfortunately, at the moment I have the biggest house. The best way to rectify this would be to get a real Christmas tree for this year and set it up in the front window.
I had a real tree back in 1996, when in my mid-20s I had a need to get a real tree for the first time. I got a long-needle pine and paid for it over the next several years as I was still finding needles stuck in the carpet. If we get a real tree this year, it will have short needles.
I've never gone "Clark Griswold" and decorated the outside of the house. I'll leave that to Christmas lighting experts who have perfected their presentation over the years and truly get into the holiday spirit by doubling their electrical bill for a couple months. I've found the best way for me to enjoy outdoor lights is to take a drive and look at the hard work of other people. A night of neighborhood driving in the car to look at the lights in the days before Christmas is a welcome distraction from the mode of "shop, shop, shop" that I can get into while I try to ensure everybody has enough presents.
By the way, last year I did all of my Christmas shopping on the square in Monroe.
Every bit of it was done in a couple of trips where I walked from store-to-store, picked out cool items, paid for them, had them wrapped and moved on... Shopping locally is nice in that I see what I'm buying in person and somebody else does the gift wrapping. That's huge for me and my fumbling fingers.
With each dollar you spend locally circulating in the community many times, it helps everyone to shop locally. Cyber Monday just passed and you may have gotten what you wanted, but once you buy something online, while you get your item, the money is out of the community and you don't have an opportunity at local service.
To those of you who have yet to do your holiday decorating, enjoy it. For those of you with cats, I hope your cat does not try to make a home out of the middle of your tree and tip it over time-after-time.
- Matt Johnson is publisher of the Monroe Times. His column is published Wednesdays.
