Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.All the colors become grays when it’s time to take down the ornaments By J. G. Fabiano The holidays are always colorful times. Between the multicolored lights adorning most of our homes and the vibrant Christmas trees that traditionally are placed in the middle of our favorite rooms the holiday season is one we all look forward to. But, then it has to end, which means there comes a time when we have to take all those ornaments down. There are some who do not bother and leave Rudolf or one of Santa’s little helpers standing besides their front door well into the Easter season. I once saw a family put rabbits ears on their plastic Santa hoping it would fool their friends and neighbors into thinking this was a well thought out plan. Most of us can’t stand the ridicule and plan an entire day taking down what killed past day about a month before. My wife and I have a system we use for all of the thirty something years of our lives together. She has the responsibility to take down and carefully wrap all the Christmas trinkets we have collected together. She wraps each and every one in new tissue paper before she stores them away for another year. She even bought special red and green plastic boxes so her treasures would look as new as they did when she made them. Yes, I said made them. Decades before my wife took some time out of her young life and made little dough ornaments that still adorn our Christmas tree. At the time I thought she was nuts but everyone, and I mean everyone who visits our home are astounded by how wonderful our Christmas tree is. I, on the other hand, am responsible to take down all the outside ornaments and the lights that shine over all of our windows during the Christmas season. After Thanksgiving, which is the traditional start to lighting up our homes to the point of making them look like something out of the Las Vegas strip tripling our electric bills to the point of having to spread them out over the next three months, is the launch point of the holiday season. The weather is pretty good this time of year because the temperature rarely hits the freezing point and the possibility of snow is weak. In fact, most of us hope for snow because the first snow of the season is as loved as the last one is hated. It is easy to put the Christmas ornaments up. The reindeer that stands near our front walk is attached to the ground by two steel rods that easily go into the ground so the early winter winds do not blow it down. The lights hung throughout my trees and around the perimeter of my home go up easily because there is little weather outside to complicate its arrival. This year I decorated an old farm wagon with ribbon hoping Mother Nature would give us some snow to make it a Norman Rockwell moment. Removing the Christmas decorations in January is a whole different story. The magic of the season is as over as any money that was left in my wallet and the concept of gentle early winter breezes are replaced by the reality of icy cold winter winds. The first thing I have to remove from the front of my house is the reindeer that earlier I was proud to report had never been blown over. Attempting to remove the two steel rods that successfully held it in place was like trying to remove the North Pole from the center of the Earth. As much as I tried it would not budge. A couple of times I thought I heard it break loose but because I now live on a daily regiment of Advil I now know it was not the rods but what used to be my straight back. Since the temperature had turned from a balmy 45o to a tundra-like 8o the Earth in front of my home would not release the rods. I did everything from use a plumbers wrench to try and turn them out of the ground. Then by some miracle from a saint in heaven who must have felt pity on me I felt something give. Ecstatically thinking my work was complete I pulled up half a rod. In reality all I did was snap the rod in half giving up the bottom half only to be found by my soon to be dying lawnmower on some spring afternoon. I would have been in a better mood had I not known this was only the first of two rods. The second one was released from the Earth only after my hacksaw did what it was meant to do. The Christmas lights decorating my home were another problem. Before Thanksgiving it was easy wrapping them around the limbs of my trees. It only took a couple of staples to attach them to the perimeter of my home. Now that the weather took a turn to the dark side the lights seemed to be attached by some miracle super glue of the future. No matter how much I tried to heat the limb with my hand’s body temperature it would not release the lights that were stuck to them. After a couple of hours I was able to retrieve most of them. The only good part of this story was I didn’t have to put them away because after tearing them off the trees there was little left of them. In fact, this spring I will probably not have to worry about fertilizing what I had just destroyed. The Christmas lights adorning my home had a similar problem. When I stapled them to the trim of my home I thought a simple staple remover would be enough of a tool to take them off. I swear the trim of my home sucked the staples in to the point they could not be seen. The blustery January weather must have scared them into becoming part of the trim. After my hands lost all feeling and turned a rather pleasant shade of blue I grabbed hold of the wires and pulled as hard as I could. To my dismay the lights did give way on some of the trim of my home. The reason was because the trim decided to be removed with the lights. Since I had little clue as to what purpose house trim had I just kicked it into the bushes hoping I would have some siding left when spring finally arrived. The holidays are always colorful times. This year I may put a plastic rabbit in the wagon that is still decorated with torn and pinkish ribbon. The problem is I sometimes wonder if they are really worth it. The End.
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