First, I have to carry all the boxes down from the attic and once again figure out where everything is. Even though all the boxes started out labeled with their contents, my wife’s desire to ‘just put everything away’ in mid January means the ornaments and decorations usually land in the first available empty box. So just getting things organized to the point where we can start decorating is a task in itself.

As much as I love my children (7 yr old twins right now), if I hear another ‘can we start decorating now’ or ‘when are you going to put up the lights outside?’, I think my head will explode. So the first order of business is to get their tree set up so they can start decorating with their favorite sports and Disney ornaments. This also allows me the time to assemble our larger ‘family’ tree (yes it’s artificial), checking to make sure all of the almost 3000 lights are working (and yes that’s ~3000 lights on a 7′ tree – it glows!). So while the kids are merrily trimming their tree, my wife and I go about sorting through the rest of the decorations, finding old favorites, and those more recently purchased. While the inside decorations are easy to set up, there are a lot of them, and then there’s the Village.

Our Christmas Village has evolved from being strictly the New England village series, to New England with a North Pole building (or two) to now being almost exclusively the North Pole series (all from Department 56). This transformation was the result of our children’s love of the various Holiday specials (Rudolph, Frosty, The Grinch, etc) which makes it easier for them to associate with a Gum Drop Factory, than a Village Hall. Also, once they realize that the Buffalo snow you’re using for the Village can double as a beard, you might as well just stop trying to decorate and enjoy the absurdity of it.

Once the inside of the house is completed, or almost, decorating the outside of the house still remains, but this requires the cooperation of the weather. As much as I enjoy Christmas, I don’t really look forward to climbing a 25ft extension ladder (sometimes in a rather chilly wind) to hand icicle lights on our house. But once completed, the lights on the house and bushes, the mini xmas trees, Candy Canes, and the large wreath hung over our front door always brings a smile to my face.

Now that all the decorations are up and the boxes are empty, it’s time to bring them back into the attic until it’s time to take it all down again. It’s a lot of work, packed into only a few days, that gets to be enjoyed for basically the month of December, and maybe a week or two in January.

So this year, to take some of the stress out of decorating, an dmake the Season a little longer, my wife asked me to start bringing down some of the Christmas items while I was in the attic putting away the Halloween decorations.

This naturally got me to thinking - is it ever too early to start putting up the Christmas decorations?

 Or, are you an ‘extremist’ who simply leaves their house decorated all year long? and if you do WHY?

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