Underwhelmed

This picture is like several houses I have already seen in the surrounding neighborhoods. It's only 3rd of December, what's your hurry, folks? I feel compelled to go up to the attic and back down twenty times lugging Christmas paraphenalia.

Why do some people insist on being the first to decorate their houses for Christmas? Do they enjoy putting undue pressure on their neighbors? Do they enjoy torturing me, specifically? It seems to me that I remember when nobody put up lights on their houses and in their yards until one week before Christmas.

I have received one not so subtle hint that we should put up the tree. Then the subtlety turns to: "You're going to put up the tree this weekend, aren't you?" That question, actually a disguised order, is soon followed by: "Aren't you going to decorate outside this year?"

"What's wrong with the flamingos and gnomes?" My answer is met with The Stare. You know the stare don't you? It's the one with those little daggers flying at you. Sometimes the stare is accompanied with a terse "Ha-Ha!" I glare out the window across the street at the house lit up like Times Square and Rockerfeller Plaza. What ever happened to a simple string of lights and some green garland wrapped around the wrought iron handrail on your front stairs?

We interrupt this blog to bring you a message from The Committee To Select "It Occurred To Me." You have only three days remaining to get out and vote for The Pointmeister as the best comedic blog for the month of November. Check out our ad on a marquis in a major city. You can cast your vote by leaving a comment at Motherdear.

This message is NOT sponsored by Froot Loops, but it were, that would be a feather in my cap, wouldn't it?

We now return you to our regularly scheduled blog.

I will admit that once the tree is up, I start to get into the Christmas spirit. There's something to to be said about sitting in a darkened room looking at a decorated an lit Christmas tree. (You will kindly note that I refuse to call them holiday trees.)

I must admit that I am in the group of people who no longer use REAL Christmas trees. For the last three years we have been displaying a fiber-optic tree. Honest, once you have used one, you'll find it hard to ever want to use a real one again, tradition or not. From the time I bring it downstairs, unpack it, put it on the stand and plug it in - a whole ten minutes has passed. You don't even have to decorate it - no tinsel, no garland, no ornaments, and the best of all, no strings of lights! Plug it in and flip the switch - voila! I am mesmerized by the slow blinking and color changes that is emitted from each and every branch. Our tree has 750 branches, each its own light show.

No.450