Highly decorated

Christmas tree effort goes into overtime

'Twas (is that even a word? Really?) about 20 nights before Christmas and the Lovely Mrs. Smith has been on a yuletide roll.

We've got strings of beads hanging from every height, tinsel on top of ribbon on top of anything that will stand still long enough to be decorated. We've consulted the social media site Pinterest so many times we're on the Over-Decorator's Watch List. Not only the halls, but the front door is decked with boughs of holly. Fa la la la ... ya, whatever.

We've got lights on the eves, an elf on the shelf and so many extension cords we're moving more electricity than the Tennessee Valley Authority. The stockings would be hung by the chimney with care, except I'm not sure I can find the mantle for all the garland, large paper shapes and enough faux tea candles with flame-like LED lights to illuminate a very global-warming conscious monastery.

Every craft store and big-box discounter in a 10-mile radius has been hit harder than Ronda Rousey. If there was a gold glitter star/snowflake/whatever that shape is, market, we've got it cornered.

As we speak (well, OK, as I write and you read, but you get the idea), I'm staring at the non-business end of a bedazzled miniature reindeer (depending, of course, on whether you're in the reindeer fertilizer business, I suppose), while visions of fake-snow-covered tree branches dance in my head. Except they're not visions; they're real and immediately to my right. The branches, not the snow, which is actually fake.

We've discussed this ... she likes to decorate. And Christmas is her Super Bowl.

Of course she's not in this alone. By consensus (and by adhering to the long-standing husband tradition of never saying no to anything, just doing it and screwing it up so badly you're never asked to do it again), we've decided holiday decorating labor will be divided thusly: She gets all the inside and outside surfaces, shelves, walls, mantles, bookcases, roofs and pets.

I do the tree.

Yeah, knock yourself out there, Sparky.

I would tell you my particular task is the hardest and most critical of the season. I wouldn't be able to do it with a straight face, but I could actually utter those words. Whether I would, in any way, mean them is a matter of speculation made even more problematic by the likelihood that whatever I do to the tree, an elf is coming along behind me to fix up.

I actually fell into my current tree-decorating role the way I've fallen into most roles, completely by chance. Seems I was the only one able to lift all the pieces of our genuine fake-but-pre-lighted-except-the-lights-are-going-out-in-clumps-and-I-can't-figure-out-which-bulb-is-burned-out-so-I-just-string-a-bunch-of-additional-lights-and-try-to-cover-the-rest-with-ornaments Christmas tree. And since I was already there, Santa's helper decided I should just finish the job.

Now I'm going to let you in on a little secret here: Decorating a Christmas tree isn't, well, particularly hard. Which means it's within my wheel house. It's also mostly tedious and really, despite all those Hallmark movies, isn't something lots of folks can do together.

So there you have it. My decorating job is a warm holiday task I get to do by myself. Ironic, but there it is.

And, as I've said, decorating a tree is one of those things that looks really hard, but isn't. Start at the top, work your way down, wherever there's green, put an ornament. Not exactly running the Supercollider here, is it?

Besides, only an idiot would possibly think of putting all the decorations at waist level and calling it a day to watch football from the sofa. At least more than once.

Speaking of football (and at some point I usually am), the real reason the task of decorating the tree has fallen to me (besides the semi-heavy lifting) is that after propagating the myth that it was really hard and required everyone to keep clear lest they step on an ornament or something, I could persuade folks to leave the house. At that point I could flip on the TV and watch OU play that school to the north.

Which kind of explains why decorating a nine-foot fake Blue Spruce would take three hours. And a halftime.

Now I'm not totally without sentiment here. Putting up the tree is a wonderful reminder of holidays past, and allows me to re-connect with all the memories of my family over years, from the little baby shoes to the ornaments celebrating milestones like graduations to the remembrances of events like first cars and childhood dreams of being an astronaut.

It's like a brightly lit time machine, taking me back. One more reason it's probably best everyone is out of the house when I put the tree up.

And if that's not enough, I have to take it down. Typically during bowl season when there's a game on I really want to see, undisturbed. So ... winning, holiday style.

Commentary on 12/04/2015

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