I’m a Christmas Bully

So…the Kelly house is now “Christmasfied” minus any lights outside.  Rob did hang lights outside  a few years ago and perhaps the Kelly women of the house weren’t as appreciative as we should have been and maybe even “made sport of” the way the lights were hung.  So, having now paid for our insensitivity for the last 4 or 5 years, we are left to wonder if the lights that we bought – icicles and other fun assorted colors – will ever make it to their rightful place of lighting and framing our home on a cold December night.  Maybe next year we’ll grovel a little harder.

Our tradition has been to put up our Christmas decor the day after Thanksgiving.  True to form, yesterday we (actually Rob) drug out all the Christmas-ness from the corners of our various storage places.  With N’Sync Christmas tunes blaring (Rob’s most NON-favorite Christmas tunes) we all dug in to the bins and began decorating and reminiscing.  I was horrified to hear how “controlling” I’ve been over the years. 

See — it’s all about the lights.  They have to be perfect.  So, for many years I would smile through clenched teeth as I tried to share the task of hanging the lights until I couldn’t stand it any more and would bark in demonic tones, “I’LL HANG THE LIGHTS, THANKS!”  Fortunately we had an unfortunate event of Robbin taking out our Christmas tree accidentally one Christmas morning (another story for another time) and so we had to buy a new tree and to help take some of the stress out of our Christmas routine, Rob bought a tree that came with lights already strung.   🙂 

Then there’s the whole hanging the decorations thing.  Again, I would politely and cheerfully encourage the girls to hang the ornaments.  Only to sneakily go around behind them and space them out more appropriately so that they hung in uniformity.  Yep, Christmas Bully at her worst.  My mind would churn – “It’s okay, Carol Ann, it’s about the kids!  Who cares if all the ornaments are on one side of the tree!”  Oh, but I care.  I care a lot.  It has to be perfect!   So….it would begin, over and over again I would carefully go behind all the creatively hung ornaments and reorganize them to perfection. 🙂

This year, I tried to control myself.  I almost made it.  I don’t think I moved more then 3 ornaments from their originally placed positions on the tree.  And, I didn’t do too bad on rearranging all the rest of the placed Christmas stuff in the rest of the house.  In fact, I’ve discovered a new approach.  I leave things where Rob and the girls place them and very appropriately slide them to their “correct” places all under the guise of “cleaning and dusting”.  I mean, come on, it’s natural to move things off the mantel and back on when you want to do a thorough dusting, right?

Ok, ok.  Maybe next year I’ll leave the house and force myself to just let things happen as it happens – I’ll let the family completely do “their thing”.  Well, maybe not next year…

I just can’t help it.

P.S.  I’ve only rearranged the nativity scene twice so far.