As much as I love the Christmas season, cookies and all, it does have a tendency to push the rest of life aside. Spending evenings making toys for the girls, writing Christmas letters, baking cookies, it’s all part of the joy of the season (to get all sappy about it) but it really puts a crimp in the rest of life. Who wants to sit and pay bills when there are cookies to be baked? Take the dog for a run when there are presents to be made, ordered and wrapped? Rip out the old carpet when you could be reading Christmas books with your kids in front of the fire? A few days ago we did not move a workshop from one outbuilding to another through eight inches of snow, instead we trimmed our tree.
Through the years we have struggled where exactly to put a Christmas tree in our little house. When the dog requires a love seat for a dog bed (you think I’m exaggerating with the “requires” but I’m not, she is unbearable without her couch) and the house is small there just isn’t a way to put up a tree without some major rearranging. Some years we’ve put furniture out into the barn, sometimes we’ve moved things upstairs and one year I put the tree in the kitchen and moved the kitchen table into the living room. This is something that I’m afraid fell under the “my wife is a crackpot” category in John’s mind but I thought worked out just fine.
This year we’ve tucked our little, lopsided, and very tipsy tree in the corner of the living room opposite the wood stove. Then we tied it to the wall and left all the good ornaments off. Between Clara and the tipsiness I still fear for the ones we did hang! It looks very cute there, and full of character. Lots of character is what happens when you choose and cut down a tree at night with no flashlight, but I digress… This year while preparing to put up the tree I did what I’ve done with the rest of life this season, I shoved it aside. In this case the rest of life was a couch, two recliners, a stereo, the biggest speakers that ever inhabited this size house, a sewing machine, a chest of sewing supplies, a bin of toys, a basket of magazines, a tub of Christmas lights and a partridge in a pear tree. I actually took a picture of what my living room looked like and then decided not to post it, it was that bad. While sometimes I have a little trouble letting the rest of life slide during the holidays I had no problem sitting in my chair looking at my tree, ignoring the mess around me and just enjoying the season for a few days. Either that speaks of my love of the holiday or my hatred of house keeping, I’m not sure which one. It wasn’t until tonight when I got tired of “taking the long way” through the living room to get to the office door that I finally pushed and pulled and rearranged things into something a bit more practical.
Now that I can walk through my house I’m going to enjoy my holidays and continue to ignore the rest of life waiting in the wings. There will be plenty of time afterward to come up with plans for those projects that will land me back in the “my wife is a crackpot” category. For instance I’m thinking we’ll use sleds to move the workshop through the snow… but not until January!
Behind the Willows 