If I didn’t know better I would think that the
Dunnevants are turning into the Cranks.
This weekend would have been a perfect time to finish
up the Christmas decorating what with all the chilly rain out and all. We had
every intention of doing just that. I managed to put the swags in the windows
and get a couple of trees down from the attic and set in place. Then everything
just sort of petered out. The usual manic holiday momentum never materialized
despite the festive Christmas soundtrack booming through the Bose sound dock.
Of course, it didn’t help when one of the trees collapsed in a heap and crashed
into the Palladian window upstairs, the plastic stand cracked in three places
rendering it useless. We never recovered after that.
Pam did manage to address a bunch of Christmas cards,
so we got that going for us.
Here’s the thing. When there are no kids at home it’s
hard to summon any meaningful urgency. Kids are the engine that powers
Christmas. Without them it’s so much easier to procrastinate. But here it is
December the 8th, only 17 days until Christmas and I haven’t even
put the lights on the holly tree out front. At this pace, we will be one of
those weird couples that put up their decorations on Christmas Eve and then
take them down on New Year’s Eve. What’s the point?
Maybe it was a mistake to watch “Christmas With the
Cranks” the other night. I was against it, but Pam and Kaitlin insisted. Terrible
movie. Poorly written, badly acted, moronic dialogue, and yet a compelling
story line. Skipping Christmas in favor of a Caribbean vacation? Sounds
fascinating actually. Set aside for a moment the fact that if we all skipped Christmas,
the country would fall into an economic quagmire that would make the Great
Depression look like Shangri-La. Also, set aside the millions of crestfallen
toddlers scarred for life by the selfishness of their parents. Once you get
past a few negatives, a couple of weeks on the beach sipping Pina coladas and
munching conch fritters sounds pretty darned good right about now.
I’m sure we will ultimately rally. We will wake up
some Saturday shaking in panicked horror at the fact that there are only ----
days left until Christmas. Pam will start barking out orders, then follow it up
with some sort of computerized to-do list sent directly to my cell phone. The
kitchen will explode into action, cranking out cookies and banana bread
seemingly by itself while the dining room gets transformed into present-wrapping
central. My bank will begin a series of calls warning me about “unusually high
use volume” on my credit card. Lucy will curl herself up into the fetal
position in some corner of the house, terrified by the chaos.
Then we will find
ourselves all dressed up sitting in a row together at the Grove Avenue
Christmas Eve service wondering how we ever managed to get it all done. Since
it will be the first time that either of us has sat down in two weeks, Pam and
I will fall asleep during the reading of Luke 2….and it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from
Caesar Augustus that ZZZZZZZZZZZ…
