Boxing Day

December 26th is Boxing Day in parts of the world. I'm not sure just what significance it has to the English and the Canadians, but to me it signifies the day that I start boxing up all the Christmas decorations. My wife is an inveterate holiday decorator, and while she has knick-knacks galore for the inside of the house, my job is anything involving lights inside or out. As the years go by the Clark Griswold in me (see National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation) rears its ugly head more and more, and I'm constantly looking for new ways to add and improve the holiday lighting.

In fact, earlier this year I had an electrician come out and run a 4 plex power outlet with a built-in timer to my front entryway to make it easier to light up everything. Not only did it make it easier, but it made possible all kinds of new stuff out front (see previous post).

Our Chrstmas tradition starts the day after Thanksgiving when we gleefully rummage through the garage to find the many, many boxes of Christmas stuff and start getting it all out and setting it up...forgetting that one day soon it must all come down again. Maybe if we thought more about the latter than the former we'd scale back a little on the whole enterprise. What goes up gleefully comes down grudgingly (just ask my teenagers).

As I was pulling out all the empty boxes this weekend and beginning to fill them with the now out-of-date Christmas stuff, I realized that Costco (and previously Price Club) has played a huge role in our holiday celebrations over the years. Just for kicks I started making a list of all the items in our permanent displays that came from Costco or Price Club:

-No less than 3 light up Victorian villages, each complete with 6 or 7 buildings and dozens and dozens of other tiny people, street lights, bridges, and other stuff the cat can knock over when she jumps up on the entry way table. Why three? For awhile there we were a sucker for these things and bought the new one that came out every year. We finally realized that we no longer had any place to put them and stopped.

-A nativity set.

-A nutcracker set with display case.

-The giant lighted wreath we hang in our front entryway window (new this year).

-One set of giant Christmas tree ornaments that we used on the Norfolk pine trees in our entryway (new this year).

-A lighted angel treetopper.

-Three large decorative candlesticks (new this year).

-Three eight foot strands of faux pine garland which we use on our stairway banisters.

-A set of white lights which wrap around the support beam in our front entry.

-A holiday entry rug (new this year).

-Three 50' strands of green rope lights.

-A front door wreath.

-Two wireless remote light controls.

-Several timers and outdoor power poles.

-Countless wrapping paper and ribbons.

In other words, if it weren't for Costco, this would be a pretty boring place. It's bad enough that they provide a lot of food and clothing items that we buy there every year, but at Christmas they always have some new gizmo or gadget that we just have to have. I'm sure that future archeologists digging through the ancient ruins of Mission Viejo will have to conclude that Costco was the predominate religion of Southern California.

Well, it's all down and packed away for another year. Before you know it we'll all be stuffing ourselves with turkey again, and the annual tradition of the hanging of the greens (and mounds of other stuff) will begin once again, and again we'll forget what a giant pain in the neck it is to put it all away.

Oh, by the way, yesterday we hit several stores and found some new junk to put up next year!