It doesn’t matter now who said it or why, but back when it mattered I was told that I bought stupid, meaningless Christmas presents and that the trees I picked out were wrong too.

Oh- and my decorations were ugly.

So every year I bought gift cards- to play it safe and  I put up a tree and decorated it and in then I  grit my teeth and ignored it until the 26th.

On that day I pull the thing down an toss the ornaments into a bucket -they’re the unbreakable plastic ones and I pull the tree apart ( its fake and come away in three  parts) and I sort of spin the segments and unwind the lights into little ready to unwind balls of lights and toss the entire kit and kaboodle into the storage closet.

The feeling I have is split between elation and relief- neither one seems appropriate.

So for my own reasons I’m trying to improve my attitude about the Christmas season because I really did come to absolutely hate it.

I’ve taken to doing things like reading ghost stories and looking for Krampus decorations. I listen to hours of  Christmas music because nobody has managed to ruin that for me. I even send out real Christmas cards.

Now when I put up my tree I sort of do it in stages- first night I put the lights on and on the second I decorate it.

I wanted to make it fun again  and splitting the task keeps it from feeling like a task and I don’t get overwhelmed by those nasty shadows from Christmas past.

Sometimes I put a movie on while I work- this year I pulled Dexter up and binged watched my favorite season ( last year it was Lucifer ) and then I take pictures of the tree with my dog.

When I think about my trees now, I remember what shows I was watching- and they are good ones- and I have pictures of Hamish Macbeth and my ugly, badly decorated tree that I actually had fun working on.

I’m hoping that I”ll have a  year when I will realize that it’s ‘that time of the year’ and be excited about it. Being that Christmas is a pretty great thing to take part in, I’m willing to work on that.

It is worth it.

Photo A.M. Moscoso