Seasons Greetings… Or is that Bah Humbug?

by Mild Mannered Man · November 30, 2012

So it is that time of year again. The time where my dad and I clamber up the loft and through grunts and groans we pull down our equivalent of the Blackpool Illuminations in festive form.

Now, I realise that this year our family is late into embracing the festive spirit, when compared to the local shops and retail outlets; they’ve got into the festive jollies for the past six weeks now, if not longer! But we hold a tradition in my family in that Christmas can not start till the first Sunday of December. It is this day when we, as a family, gather together to try to festoon our modest family bungalow with the modern take on the spirit of Christmas.

And that means getting out our carefully packed away Christmas lights and decorations.

I write carefully packed away and I do mean carefully packed. My Sisters and I spent 6 hours one cold weekend last January making sure each string of lights, each plastic star and Santa figure had its power lead wrapped tidily around it own device, each item boxed and the placed suitably in the corner of our loft reserved for the Christmas decorations. A place where we have no reason to disturb the precious lights.

That’s not how they were found when it came to bring them down earlier this week.

Unbeknownst to the rest of the family, my sister had reason to go up the loft, looking for what I could not tell you. But instead of looking in the part of the loft where her items are kept, she felt the need to rummage through the ‘Christmas Decorations Area’ of the loft. And rummage she did. The chaos and confusion we found as we went to get the lights was enough to make a grown man weep, and though he will deny it to his dying day, I am certain I did see a little whimper creep out of my Dad.

There were strings of light pulled out of their boxes and flung across the loft, Santa figures kicked about the floor and all manner of baubles and light bulbs smashed everywhere. It was like a whirling dervish had set up home in the loft. All our hard work at packing the decorations away was for nought.

However, after an afternoon of cursing, the loosing of some tempers, we managed to get our lights down. The next task is to untangle, sort and check each light and illuminated figure, to figure out which one has broken and needs replacing, before this Sunday when the family will go to work on making our little part of town bright enough to bring down low flying aircraft.

And this year, it will be my darling sister going up the ladder to string the lights, not me!

As soon as the masterpiece is complete I will be posting a few photos to show to the world our glorious handiwork.

UPDATE!

So, instead of deciding to clamber about the roof tomorrow, something to do with the weather not being great, we have managed to put up our Christmas Lights today. And I have to say they are looking lovely this year. Just right to get into the festive spirit this year…