'Tis the season Christmas has come to our house. Every year this happens earlier than the year before. Sometimes I have to struggle to hold it back until Halloween is over. There is one person to blame for this phenomenon. My mother. My mother loves to decorate for Christmas. She buys new things every year and is often more excited over them than over her gifts. You can always tell when it's about to start when she says "Come see what I bought!". She's big on collections. Each year a special table is assigned to each one. To date we have a Santa table, an angel table and a snowman table. It's so ingrained that each member of the family is always on the lookout for new additions to the collections. My favourite is the angel table. Personally, I prefer angels without faces. It seems wrong somehow to assign a regular human face to an ethereal being. My mother also has a Christmas earring collection. I think she has enough now to wear a different pair each workday during the month of December. She's something of a legend at her office because of these earrings. Some people come to her office with the sole purpose of seeing what pair she's wearing that day. Yesterday she came home with a christmas tree window hanging made from strings of beads, a set of snowman wind chimes, a christmas recipe box and kitchen angel, three pairs of earrings and a pin. She says her new collection is going to be christmas pins now that she has however many pairs of earrings it is. I think it's cute, this decorating fixation. Our house always looks very festive and smells good because the decorating spills into baking as well. I associate Christmas with good smells, sounds, sights, and company so she must be doing something right. |