It's the great Creeping Christmas Crap disease.
No matter which late-in-the-year holiday you celebrate, there's bound to be a proliferation somewhere in your home. Christmas is the worst though.
Here's how it happens...silently, stealthily.....
At some point in your life you decided it was time to get some Christmas decorations. Maybe you got married or rented your first apartment. Perhaps your parents gave you a few of their old decorations but most likely you went to a store and bought some that suited you and you merrily decorated your abode.
After the holiday you packed the decorations up and stored them...in the attic, basement or closet where they'd be safe until next year. For the remaining 11 months, life went on and you forgot about the sleigh bells and glass balls in the attic. Before you knew it, it was November and even before the turkey went into the oven, the stores were already loaded with sale priced Christmas decor. This year there were cool bubble and LED lights and interesting new balls for the tree. You couldn't avoid it, so you perused and picked up a few more tchotchkes for your Christmas decorating.
In December, Mom gave you a Hummel ornament and if you decided to have kids right off the bat, they made their own ornaments out of construction paper, popcorn, glitter and crayons. This year your tree was loaded with the new stuff and the original items you had from the attic, but you managed to squeeze most of it on the little tree. What didn't fit, you hung around the house.
Fast forward to 5 years later.... In the attic are several years worth of new decoration purchases. You like to change the theme of the tree when you can, but you might want to go back and mix in a few of the older ornaments. You can't get rid of any of it because each ornament brings back memories of Christmas past, but each year you add to the collection. Your kids are still young and you still have all their handmade adornments. Your little tree didn't have enough branches, so you purchased a bigger one, but it already had the lights attached so you didn't need the ones you had.
After a few more years, not all the Christmas boxes came down from the attic. There isn't enough room for it all, so you had to leave some of it up there, yet each year you accumulate more via after-holiday sales or when you purchased ornaments from different places you visited.
For many in middle age or later, the Christmas "growth" has reached mammoth proportions in the attic. One recent year, while visiting family I witnessed dozens of boxes, wreaths and miscellaneous jingling bags emerging from the dark void above the garage. This was the beginning of the process. A new step was involved...deciding which of the items would be used. Whatever didn't make the cut was hoisted back up the narrow attic steps to spend another year baking up in the rafters. There was so much stuff that every empty inch of visible counter space, shelving or other flat surface contained something that glittered or resembled a Poinsettia. The process of placing it all took at least an entire day, if not more. Christmas decorating had become a job unto itself.
Nearly every home I visit has a holiday accumulation. Some are gargantuan. In some cases 30, 40 or even 50 boxes in the attic contain Christmas items. Lower boxes are crushed and practically fossilized under the weight of accumulation above them. Among it all are multiple trees and stands, old tangled strings of lights and dry rotted boxes of ornaments. Decades old garland disintegrates when touched and plastic tree decorations crumble from years of searing summer attic heat.
The first thing I hear is "Can you sell all that old Christmas stuff for us?"
Nope. Everyone has more than they need. They don't want yours too.
Some homes give all holidays equal treatment, so the Christmas accumulation is multiplied many times to include Halloween, Easter, Valentines Day and perhaps Groundhog Day.
Certainly, holiday items that are old enough to be antiques are prized, especially if they survive 50 years of storage, but 99.9% of it is absolutely unsaleable.
Best course? Do a decoration purge. Pull it all down, get rid of whatever has not survived the years, donate the rest to a place where those who can't afford to purchase their own decorations can have them to make their own memories.
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| Honey, we're using it all this year. I don't care if we don't have the room. Its Christmas, dammit. |
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