The Decorations

This year, we have chosen a retro theme for our Christmas decor.

Retro, meaning nothing matches. Our Christmas tree is the goulash of trees. There isn’t a theme at all.

I remember my Great Grandma Dobbs tree. She had those good Christmas lights.

She’d probably had them since the 60s or 70s. They were pale, multicolored lights. Each light had flower petals around them. Or I thought they were flower petals. They were made to last. If you get two years out of Christmas lights nowadays, you’re doing well.

Back to her tree, it had all the same ornaments from decades past. I remember looking at each ornament on her tree. They didn’t look new and shiny like all the up-to-date 90s ornaments my parents had on our tree.

I remember one being a very aged brownish-cream color with gold trim. The years had not been kind, or maybe it was made like that. Styles from decades past were not familiar to me.

There may have been different ornaments from different decades. But nothing that I could recognize as new. But why change what works?

Nothing changed because it didn’t need to.

There was no going out and getting a whole new theme for Christmas. She didn’t follow the trends or fads. She just put up the tree with the truly retro ornaments. And she was satisfied with it.

I remember asking my Grandma why Great-Grandma didn’t have nice ornaments. She said that she did. I didn’t understand.

I think I understand contentment a little more these days.

It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be comparable to HGTV, Home and Gardens, or Magnolia.

It only has to be what you like. And if someone else doesn’t like it? They don’t live there.

Since we moved into this house, we’ve illuminated our neighborhood with C9, incandescent, full-power, airport runway, and cut-through-the-fog white lights.

Last year, we needed to replace them, so we gave Son #1 the option of white or multicolored lights. He chose the latter.

We wept. We could have gone with white, but we decided it was more about them than us. We prefer all white or red and white lights any day over multicolored on the house.

We still put white lights on the tree, though. We had some self-respect. But then, most of our white lights went out this year. We have two small strands in working order.

I brought in a couple of strands of whites, and the boys said, “Oh, look. A ton of light bulbs.”

Then I plugged in the multicolored, and Son #2 said, “Dada!! LIGHTS! Wow, I like dees lights!” He sang the praises of the multicolored lights.

I looked at Charity. We knew we had lost control over the Christmas tree.

So we bought the ones the boys liked. They helped decorate the tree. We have a retro Christmas — a conglomeration of colored lights and every ornament we own. All we need is tinsel.

Do we like it? Not particularly.
Do we like seeing the joy in our children’s eyes? Yes.

So, we settled for being content.

to the goulash of posts,
– Caleb

#retro #Christmas #Christmastree #November #Ornaments #Thanksgiving #HolidaySeason