Bah Humbug!

With the holiday season upon us, I’ve found myself in a quandary…I’ve lost my fa-la-la. With Miss Jaci begging to set up the Christmas tree, I figured I had better search for it, fast. So, I poured my self some “holiday cheer” also known as eggnog with a splash (oh, who are we kidding—healthy pour) of spiced rum and started my search.

My fa-la-la has been slowly fading over the past several years and I knew finding might be a challenge. In years past, I have decorated every nook and cranny and shopped with great excitement. I am the girl that one year made my own wrapping paper and got glue gun burns making fancy bows with silk poinsettias attached. I am also the gal who hosted a holiday bake-a-thon with my mother, mother in-law and two sisters-in-law and cranked out 15 different kinds of cookies and candies in one joyful (??) afternoon. This year…I’m not feeling any of it.

 I braved the basement and located the numerous boxes and bags of Christmas “stuff” and started hauling the big tree up the stairs. After throwing my back out and pulling muscles I didn’t know I had only to find myself half way up the steps, I decided to just put up the smaller tree. (See? I was once a “more than one Christmas tree” person!)

With the small tree and the decorations hauled to the main floor and Jaci excitedly decorating, I began to go through the décor to decide what to put out, what to keep and what to throw away. Each box and bag triggered a memory from Christmases past.

I thought of the time my younger brother got a pony. Santa had left it tied in the basement and it pooped all over.

As I hung the stockings, I couldn’t help but think of the stockings that hung when I was a child. Mom hung our stockings in the double doorway between the kitchen and living room. Always feeling left out; my dad would tack up a pair of my mom’s pantyhose right in the middle, telling us that was “his stocking.” Santa would always drop an orange into each foot of the nylons and by Christmas morning, those puppies would be hanging to the floor.

I thought of all the times the entire Jensen clan filled Grandma and Grandpa’s tiny house and fought over Grandma’s Chex mix, always set out in recycled margarine containers. Being one of the youngest, by the time I got to it, all that was left was cereal, a few pretzel sticks and the occasional Brazil nut.

Grandpa Clarence’s sleigh bells from the horse drawn sleigh came to mind, too. Each Christmas he would sneak away and start jingling them to let us Grandkids know that Santa was near.

I laughed at the memory of our first Christmas as a young family. I had conned Dan into buying me a real tree and I thought I had picked the “perfect one.” I set it up in the corner of the living room in front of the door that no one used during the winter. Little did I know just how genius of a move that would be, as the dumb thing wouldn’t stay up. After finding it lying on the floor for the third time, I wrapped fishing line around the trunk in several places and tied it to the doorknob.

With the tree finally staying upright, a new problem emerged…the tree would give off a funky smell every once in a while. We couldn’t figure out what was causing it until we witnessed the source. You see, our faithful and spoiled rotten hunting dog, Bud, was allowed to come into the porch on nights when it was rather cold. Little did we know he didn’t stay in the porch, but instead took a nightly constitutional around the house. That journey included peeing on the Christmas tree. I was told I couldn’t get mad at him because he was a dog and it was a tree and dogs pee on trees.

This was also the same Christmas where I had volunteered to cook Christmas dinner for my mother-in-law’s extended family. (A suicide mission if there ever was one, I know.) I planned to do turkey and all the trimmings, complete with pie featuring my mother’s famous piecrust. The night before the event, I took the lard out of the freezer to thaw. (Yes, I said lard…pie crust needs lard.) The next morning, I got up and set about to start the pies. I went to the kitchen and the lard was nowhere to be found. I thought that Dan must have put it back in the freezer, so I went to retrieve the missing pork fat. It was then that I discovered where my lard had gone. Bud, on his evening journey had decided it would make a good snack, only his stomach did not agree after he wolfed down the entire package, plastic wrap and all. The evidence was in a giant puke puddle on my back porch rug.

As I reminisced and finished the decorating, the last piece I put up for display was the Christmas basket I made for one of my Grandma’s. (Yep, I used to MAKE gifts, too!) It is just a simple basket with greenery wrapped around the handle and the edge. It has gold ribbon and tiny, white lights strung throughout the greenery and features a lovely bow and white silk poinsettia blooms throughout. In the center is a ceramic Nativity. It was then and there that my search had ended. What had been lost, was found; for there, in the tiny manger of that Dollar Store Nativity Scene was the real reason for the season…there was my missing fa-la-la.