When Decorating for Christmas Isn’t So Merry

Picture this: You have been standing outside for so long that you can no longer feel your fingertips, much less the Christmas lights you are currently supposed to be stringing up alongside the house. Earlier today, you were forced to do the painstaking work of carefully selecting where to hang up your stockings, put the ornaments, and place the Nativity scene. “So much for holiday cheer,” you think to yourself. We’ve all been here.

Decorating for the holidays can be a harrowing experience, and not many people are spared from the not-so-festive ordeal. It seems that before people can even finish their Thanksgiving leftovers, they are in their yards decorating for the big day. During the winter, a walk through one’s own neighborhood is comparable to a stroll through Longwood Gardens. Lights are twinkling on every rooftop and sparkling in every tree, like a scene straight out of Christmas Vacation.

Moreover, driving past house after house with massive Santas and blow-up snowmen can dishearten many, for these displays are just one of the ways that people raise the bar for Christmas decor. With each passing year, it seems as though the decorations multiply until your whole neighborhood is under siege. I mean, you can only see Rudolph on so many rooftops before starting to feel like a Scrooge.

Decorating for the holidays serves as a special insight into the stress and mayhem of the rest of the holiday season, like a precursor. Shopping, gift-wrapping, and cookie decorating all serve as unnecessary holiday stressors. If we all put fewer expectations on the holiday season, and instead just took the time to appreciate being with our friends and family, we could all have a more merry Christmas. Anything is possible. Even the Grinch’s heart grew three sizes in the end.