CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS: Some Have the Knack and Some Don't

Here’s hoping all of you who celebrate Thanksgiving this weekend are having a wonderful time! It was kind of quiet around here this year, because people were either away or under the weather, including me. Being American born and raised, but having lived in Canada for a long time, I feel free to celebrate twice. But I have to admit that no matter how long I live here, Thanksgiving in early October will always seem too soon to me. The rhythm of the cool weather holidays: Halloween leading the charge, followed by Thanksgiving and the Santa parade sliding gently (or frantically) into the December holidays just seems right. A few of my neighbors had their lights up a week or so ago, but I always put up my Christmas decorations after Thanksgiving. So this week I took advantage of a couple of very mild windless days to get everything in place. There’s my single wonky string of “Charlie Brown” lights on the bushes under the front window. A small wreath on the front porch window, and something new this new for the back year: a lightbulb-covered deer I put together myself. I bought one of those brown deer made of some kind of twigs and branches bundled together, a spool of twist tie wire, and then spent a couple of labor-intensive hours anchoring little white lights all over it. I don’t put up my tree anymore. It just seems like too much effort for too little reward. There are only two places in my house where I could put up the tree. The unheated front porch, or the unheated back “Florida” porch, neither of which I can see from my livingroom. But those are the only two places where I can have a tree that the cats can’t get at. If I put the tree up where I could actually see it, the cats would have it wrecked in an hour, and what they didn’t break they’d ingest, so… For my first couple of years here I put the tree up on the Florida porch, but it seemed kind of pointless to put on my heavy coat, go out and turn the tree lights on, look at them for a minute, and go back through the doorwall into the warm house. So, that’s why I wanted the deer in the backyard. I want some Christmas lights that I can actually see from somewhere in my main room. So, now my backyard is decorated too. The best part was watching the squirrels cautiously checking it out for the first time! So, these are my decorations. They may not be the biggest, best or brightest on the block, but hey, we love them!

My Christmas Gallery



Wreath and lil’ Santa in the front porch window. The wreath is a little off-kilter from being squished in the box.










The Charlie Brown lights









The deer waiting to be airlifted to the yard. He’s got duct tape and twine on his back because when the winter winds blast off the lake, he must be securely lashed—like Ulysses to the mast—to the trunk of the pollarded ash tree.








The light test run. It works!

The top photo I got from Google Images. I have no idea who took it originally, but it kind of sums it up for me.