Ah, the decorating for Christmas. Nothing speaks more to who you are as a person, not to mention your familial skills, than how you handle the annual tradition of turning your home into a holiday extravaganza. Most see it as a festive, joyous occasion that lets family come together and bond. Hooray!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OR \u2026 a complete disaster when everything goes wrong and two lizards get loose in the house. Because \u2026 yeah \u2026 2020. Booo! But I imagine these are common events as people dress up their domiciles for the holidays. How many of these traditions did you cross off your to-do list this year?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 Only in Florida do you get lizards perched atop a Christmas tree like the traditional star, or maybe even a Baby Jesus. In other parts of the country you might worry about snow or leaves or even squirrels getting lodged into your tree. But Floridians have to think about shaking out reptiles. I didn\u2019t, so we ended up with two of the little buggers running around and needing to be corralled. \u201cOh, just leave him,\u201d my daughter pleaded. \u201cLook how majestic he looks up there surveying the land.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 Then there are the Christmas tree lights that don\u2019t light. That\u2019s OK. Nothing lasts forever, and thank goodness they supplied extra bulbs and fuses. But I ask you this: In all your years of Christmas decorating, have you ever got a string of lights to spring back to life thanks to extra bulbs and fuses? I never have. I immediately turn to the fuses, always thinking, \u201cHey. I\u2019m Mr. Fixit. I\u2019ll save the day because I know stuff and my family will celebrate me as a hero!\u201d What I don\u2019t know is that replacing fuses that are about the size of dust mites requires the same kind of microsurgery equipment found only in the top hospitals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And if by some miracle you\u2019re able to get the fuse out of the little plug compartment, good luck getting a new one back in. Because the fuse compartment magically morphs into a different shape and size that makes it impossible to get the same-sized fuse back in. Not that you know which fuse is good anymore, because you mixed the bad ones in with the good ones. Not to worry: Any minute now someone will scream, \u201cOh no \u2026 another lizard! Get a plastic cup!\u201d and save you from scorn and embarrassment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 What\u2019s worse: The 10 times you almost toppled down the attic stairs carrying plastic boxes of Christmas ornaments? Or, the 10 holiday-inappropriate, way-out-of-bounds things you yelled as you nearly toppled down the attic stairs? Most of mine outbursts were some variation of, \u201cWhy in the bling-blangety-blang do we have a bag of fish tank rocks when we don\u2019t have a bling-blangin fish!?!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 Why is it someone always misinterprets this holiday-inappropriate language and calls back, \u201cDid you say we can get a fish?!?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 That magical feeling of tracking Christmas tree sap all over the house. It\u2019s on your shoes. It\u2019s on your hands, and therefore everything your hands touched. And even more magical is the fact that you can\u2019t blame this quickly-spreading mess on anyone but yourself because you expressly told your family: \u201cNO ONE touches the tree but me because you clowns always get tree sap all over the house!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 The obligatory Elf on the Shelf tradition as it plays out with a 14-year-old:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Me: So \u2026 uh, Elf on the Shelf is back, huh? Did you find her this morning?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Daughter: Yup \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Me: Awesome! Great! So \u2026 um, just curious: Did you at all think to yourself, \u201cBoy, I don\u2019t know. This sure looks like someone was told early this morning to hurry up and move the Elf, and then they just went and jammed it behind the hutch?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Daughter: Yup \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Me: That\u2019s what I was afraid of. OK, good talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 How, by some estimates, you own 73,000 extension chords of varying lengths, gauges and weather-appropriateness. But come Christmas-time, you can\u2019t find a single one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 How your wife doesn\u2019t consider \u201cThe Mandalorian\u201d holiday appropriate or festive enough while decorating the tree. Which means you get that lesser-known Charlie Brown Christmas special, and have to wait another day to see what happens to Baby Yoda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 How the inside porch cat becomes mesmerized at the lights on the Christmas tree and decides this towering, shimmering decoration must be some kind of tribute erected solely to him. As such, he determines he will show his satisfaction by creating a nest amongst the red velvet tree skirt. Which wouldn\u2019t be so bad if he would also be willing to rid the house of lizards that come climbing down out of the tree. But power has gone to the porch cat\u2019s head, and he can\u2019t be bothered with trivial, Florida traditions like that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ah, the decorating for Christmas. Nothing speaks more to who you are as a person, not to mention your familial skills, than how you handle the annual tradition of turning your home into a holiday extravaganza. Most see it as a festive, joyous occasion that lets family come together and bond. Hooray! <\/p>\n
OR \u2026 a complete disaster when everything goes wrong and two lizards get loose in the house. Because \u2026 yeah \u2026 2020. Booo! But I imagine these are common events as people dress up their domiciles for the holidays. How many of these traditions did you cross off your to-do list this year?<\/p>\n
\u2022 Only in Florida do you get lizards perched atop a Christmas tree like the traditional star, or maybe even a Baby Jesus. In other parts of the country you might worry about snow or leaves or even squirrels getting lodged into your tree. But Floridians have to think about shaking out reptiles. I didn\u2019t, so we ended up with two of the little buggers running around and needing to be corralled. \u201cOh, just leave him,\u201d my daughter pleaded. \u201cLook how majestic he looks up there surveying the land.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Then there are the Christmas tree lights that don\u2019t light. That\u2019s OK. Nothing lasts forever, and thank goodness they supplied extra bulbs and fuses. But I ask you this: In all your years of Christmas decorating, have you ever got a string of lights to spring back to life thanks to extra bulbs and fuses? I never have. I immediately turn to the fuses, always thinking, \u201cHey. I\u2019m Mr. Fixit. I\u2019ll save the day because I know stuff and my family will celebrate me as a hero!\u201d What I don\u2019t know is that replacing fuses that are about the size of dust mites requires the same kind of microsurgery equipment found only in the top hospitals. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[576,561,558,556,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2020-nutshells","category-family","category-florida","category-holidays","category-parenthoodandchildren"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2173,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2172\/revisions\/2173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}