Deck the Boxes with Boughs of Packing Tape (no dogs here either...)

Sooner or later I have to address this festive Christmas season issue.

Honestly, I am usually a Christmas pest. I start cookies in October and when you’re baking Christmas cookies, Christmas music is a requisite. The crèche goes up the day after Thanksgiving, and the tree that weekend. I even have festive Christmas earrings. (I do not, however, indulge in sporting large Christmas images all over my ensemble. It’s not a manifesto like the teddy bear thing. Just recognition that I do not have the body to wear them: Picture an Oompah Loompah wearing a sweater with a large Christmas tree on the front…Sorry. Now try to burn the image from your brain…)

This year, however, the Christmas spirit is sorely lacking around here. All the Christmas decorations are stored behind 5,000 tons of new furniture that was supposed to be in the new house we were supposed to be occupying 80 years ago. Not that there are a lot of decorations either because, other than the sentimental ornaments and a crèche that was more an investment than a purchase, most of it was getting pretty shabby. There was a garland that had broken up so much we just used the pieces like tinsel (an interesting, though somewhat tacky, effect). Then there was the wreath we’d hang in the dining room that would shed several branches if someone’s tread was too heavy. So it all got pitched.

Buy new, you say? What fun, you say?

Well, we’re having trouble deciding what goes with our current décor, which is -- um – late…uhhhhhhh…UPS warehouse.

Intellectually, I have guilt over my lack of holiday spirit, realizing how very, very lucky I am and how very very spoiled I’ve become. But I want my new house and my fireplace with a mantle and my bay window INSTALLED with a wintry snow scene glowing in it and my big, long dining room table loaded with food cooked on my gas stove that heats the entire bottom of the pot, not just four inches in the center, and a tree in the living room with a piano in front of it so Dirtman can begin playing and we can sing “White Christmas” together while he uses his pipe to ring the bells on the tree while Danny Kaye and Vera-Ellen tap dance on the patio and Clarence gets his wings and Ralphie gets his Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock and the Bumpus’ dogs steal our turkey. AND I WANT IT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Editor's Note: We recognize several errors in the above rant. First of all, please do not construe the fact that Sisiggy wants to sing "White Christmas" with the Dirtman to mean we are encouraging any vocal attempts on Dirtman's part. He should just sit there, mouth words and look like Bing Crosby. Also, there is not a single Linguini who can or should play the piano. And we are fully aware Sisiggy just wished for dead people to dance on her patio, which would be cool in late October, but is kind of creepy in December.

(Editor’s Note II: We realize a brief reference to dogs was allowed to remain in this post, but since they are not, specifically, Sisiggy’s dogs and they neither talk nor make illegal offers over the internet, we feel confident non-dog people will accept this as the pop cultural reference it is and move on. Thank you.)