Terry Flanagan: No Matter the Frustrations, You Just Can't Outsource Christmas

We made it back from visiting family and friends in Florida just in time to rake like mad to catch the last leaf pick-up and to pick up turkey and groceries for Thanksgiving. This year Dorothy did brunch for my son and his girlfriend, and then we had my cousins over for dinner. So we spent a lot of time in the kitchen making stuff and watching as much of the parade and football as we could catch on the small TV in the kitchen.

The Thanksgiving meal was barely digested, by the time we had packed up the three boxes of Pilgrims, turkeys, and other assorted Thanksgiving holiday décor and headed down to the crawlspace to swap them for the much-larger collection of Christmas decorations. Fifteen boxes at last count, and that doesn’t include the outside decorations or the artificial tree. By the time we dragged out the last box we were exhausted, and I still had to haul everything upstairs before we could even start decorating.

The last thing to bring up is the tree, which seems to get heavier each year. I still can’t figure out it ever fit into the box it came in. I tried to get it back into the box the first year we got it. No matter how much I pushed and prodded, I never even came close. So I tossed the box and now use two full-size tree bags. It’s not easy putting the tree away either. You have to sneak up on it, get it in a bear hug, quickly fold up the branches, and wrap the plastic lacing around it before it knows what happened.

The strategy is pretty much the same as calf-roping at a rodeo, except those guys are actually skilled. As soon as I think I have the tree pinned, another branch breaks loose, and I have to try and grab it and get it folded back up with the rest before the next one escapes. After several minutes of this madcap holiday mirth, punctuated by a few colorful phrases, I finally give up and holler to Dorothy for help. This is only a last resort, though, because I was the one who wanted an artificial tree and Dorothy wanted a real tree.

Dorothy doesn’t say anything as she helps me bind up the unruly tree, but I know she’s thinking that we wouldn’t be wrestling with taking the tree out or putting it away if we had a real tree like she wanted. And I’m starting to think the same thing, but I don’t dare admit I may have made a mistake. Fortunately, we don’t have to grapple with putting the tree away for a few more weeks yet.

We spent much of the Thanksgiving weekend putting the decorations up. I did the outside lights, wreaths, and stable first, making the most of the daylight and the unusually mild weather. While the weather sometimes cooperates, the lights never do. I can test and retest lights until I’m certain they’re working, only to have a strand or two go out once I get them up. I should know better by now, but I go ahead and try to troubleshoot the problem anyway.

I try the usual methods of replacing fuses and bulbs, tightening connections, using light testers, cursing, and coaxing. If I do manage to get the strand working again, it invariably goes out once I reconnect it. So I do what I should have done in the first place—throw out the bad set and replace it. Of course, lights continue to go out as the season progresses. Eventually I tire of the battle and decide that the bad lights will just have to stay up with the good until I take everything down. If the guys who make Christmas lights had made temple lamps they would have kept going out and there would be no Hanukkah story. But in the Season of Miracles, I continue to hold out hope that someday we might be able to produce a simple strand of mini lights that lasts an entire Christmas season.

While I was struggling with the outdoor lights, Dorothy did the inside decorations, except for the tree and the Christmas village, which I’m marginally capable of doing without adult supervision. She also adjusted the outside wreaths and decorations which I just kind of slapped up there. She always does a great job and the house looks great after it’s decorated, but every year we tell ourselves that we have to start trimming back on the trimming. It seems to take more effort and more time every year. As I get older and slower, I might have to start putting up decorations in July right after I finish putting stuff away from the year before.

But why go through all of this agony year after year when you can get someone else to do it? There are services that will take the drudgery out of the holidays so you can have more time to celebrate with friends and family, as the marketing pieces suggest. You can farm out all of the menial tasks that make Christmas a pain. You can have professionals decorate your home for the holidays so that it rivals the Disney Main Street Electrical Parade in lumens output. You can use personal shopping services that will buy, gift wrap, and even deliver all of the Christmas presents on your gift list. You can have personalized Christmas cards designed and mailed for you. If you don’t have time to take the kids to see Santa, there are web sites that will provide personalized videos from Santa for your child. Why bake or cook a holiday meal when you can buy cookies, cater your holiday meal, or dine out, possibly at a Chinese restaurant like they did in A Christmas Story?

All of the things we grumble about doing during the holidays though, including family gatherings, are really part of the traditions that make the holidays special. And though it may be tempting once in a while to outsource Christmas, it just wouldn’t be Christmas if we didn’t do the things we’ve always done to celebrate the season. Like a lot of things, what you get out of Christmas depends on what you put into it.

Now that we’re done with the Christmas decorations, we’re off to the and to see the lighting of the Christmas tree on the courthouse lawn. This may be the year I finally break the pepparkrakor (the ginger snap cookies Santa Lucia hands out) into three pieces in my palm and get my wish. I may need to work on a new technique though because the karate chop is not working and the accompanying yell tends to rattle the people around me.