A Christmas Quandry



So the question this year is whether I will decorate the place for the Holidays. The Boy is now 16 years old, going on 17, going on 53. He is too mature and adult, he says, for the usual holiday fol-de-rol. Trimming the tree is for kids (the last two years I've had to do it myself) and it all just gets in the way of stuff he wants to do in the living room. Anyway, if I decorate the house I'll do it alone.

Of course, you tell yourself as your kid is growing up that you do all the Christmas stuff for him. You do it because you're a good parent. You do it because you want to give him the memories. You do it to give that piece of magic that he will hang on to for the rest of his life.

But it's all justification and you know it. I should say, and "I know it." I decorate the house for myself as much as for him. I do it to remember the few Christmases that I remember from my very young childhood as being magical and wonderful and warm and familal. I hope that, by decorating, I will recapture that feeling. Such magic is in short supply in one's adult life.

Still, it's a lot of work. Particularly doing it alone. There's something unutterably sad about putting the tree decorations on by myself.

So take a good look at the picture above, taken two years ago. It might be the last time in a long time the Little Yellow House dresses up for the holidays.