But as we struggled for consciousness the next morning, we slowly remembered that Thanksgiving was only the opening act. The main attraction was about to take the stage.
I call this second phase of "The Holidays" the gauntlet. I'm talking about the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, up until the time you put out the milk and cookies Christmas Eve. Indeed, this month-long encounter with tradition can test the best of us. Our only hope is that the generous dose of goodwill we loaded up on through turkey-day gluttony will carry us until Santa arrives.
Okay. Maybe it's not quite that bad. But during this period of roughly four weeks a lot comes at you at a pretty good clip. For me it starts early on what we now refer to as Black Friday. I'm not talking about fist fights in department stores over this year's hot toy. No, what I'm referring to is for me really black-and-blue Friday. The day we put away Thanksgiving and get out Christmas.
The first order of business is to return all the items moved for the big dinner back to their usual spots. I've tried the "spoonful of sugar" thing. It doesn't work on furniture. So it's back to tugging and lugging and Ibuprofen. Including a carefully navigated descent down the basement stairs doing the two-step with the super-sized table leaf.
It's when all that's done and I've plopped down into an easy chair for a breather that I begin to hear it. The faint, rustling sound of wreaths and ornaments and synthetic pine trees straining against cardboard confinement, trying to breakout. Somehow they know it's time. Is it the drop in temperature? The low humidity? Or the smell of turkey leftovers being nuked? I've never figured out how they know, but they do.
For most of the 30 plus years we have lived in our Vernier home, answering this cry for freedom was truly an ordeal. It involved trudging up and down stairs to retrieve the complainants from our attic crawlspace, accessible only through a small hidden door in our upstairs hallway. This out-of-the-way location seemed perfect 11 months of the year. It did its job dutifully, keeping things secure while leaving more convenient storage areas available for important stuff (like back-up VCRs, slide carousal overflow, or my extensive matchbook collection).
To keep peace with members of the family who were hot to decorate, I would climb the stairs, get down on all fours, and crack open the attic door. Now in attack position, I would cautiously crawl inside and one-by-one haul out the various boxes and bags of Christmas paraphernalia and stack them in the upstairs hallway.
As there wasn't enough room for me to turn around in the attic, I had to crawl forward and backward several times to complete the withdrawal. And with the narrow opening, low ceiling and unfinished pine board floor, I usually managed a few head bumps, finger scrapes, knee bruises and the occasional splinter in the process. Once everything was out in the hall, I in my wounded state would carry/drag these rascals down the stairs to the staging area in the living room, doing my best not to get blood on the carpet.
Fortunately for me, once the inventory was delivered the A-team took over. I was excused. It was established years ago that my greatest value to the Christmas decorating mission was as skycap. It was okay with me as I was then free to seek the medical supplies (band aids, ice packs, tweezers) I needed to fully recover from my ordeal. Once I was propped up somewhere out of the way to recuperate, the others gleefully went about unpacking, assembling, hanging and otherwise deploying their holiday treasures.
I did have the additional task of re-stowing the now idle containers until they were needed again. But empty, they were no match for me. I admit to a smug grin on my face as I wrestled these lightweights back up the stairs, shoved them into their cold attic refuge (no insulation) and turned out the light. With only one or two additional head bumps.
Now, I did say all of this happened for most of the past 30 years. About three years ago I had an epiphany. As empty nesters, Nancy and I had converted the girls' bedrooms to guest rooms. In the case of our downstairs guest room, one with ample closet space as it at one time was the master bedroom. It dawned on me that this space might be put to better use.
I grabbed my tape measure and started comparing the size of my Christmas problem with the capacity of the potential solution. I concluded that with a wee bit of planning and repackaging, all that stuff would fit nicely into one of the two available guest room closets. And it does. The new Christmas decorations storage facility is only about ten feet from where it all gets delivered and unpacked. And at the same height above sea level. No more stairs. This was a joyous discovery which still makes me smile when this task comes around each year.
Outwitting the Christmas decorations was nice, but there were and still are more hurdles to clear before escaping the holiday gauntlet. Like gifting.
When we think of gifting, what comes to mind? It's the expression of joy that seizes the face of someone who just received the perfect present. Right? Sure. But let's back up a little bit. How does that happen?
How about this theory. All year long you are on the lookout for just the right item for each individual on your gifting list. And every so often you find one of these items. You buy it. Wrap it. And tuck it away in your secret hiding place until it's time to deliver it or put it under the appropriate tree to be found. Is that the way it works where you live?
Well, here in my world it's a little different. It starts like this. The wounds from your decorating encounter are nearly healed. You've regained the use of your hands and you're paging through your day planner to see what you've missed. And wham! You realize the number of days until Christmas is lower than the outside temperature. Time to boogie.
In the old days, this meant a steady stream of trips to crowded malls and specialty shops, all of whom were short on staff and none of whom had adequate parking for the holiday crush. Also, it usually snowed or sleeted from the time you left your driveway until you returned with armfuls of goodies to sneak into a private area for further processing. At least that's the way I remember it.
For a few years after we acquired Wiser Times, Nancy and I mitigated the gifting challenge by packing the procurement work into a "fun" weekend at the cottage. We would leave on a Friday morning in early December and shop our way up I-75, making stops at Great Lakes Crossing (the huge designer mall northwest of Pontiac) and Fashion Square (the mall between Saginaw and Bay City).
We would have lunch on the road and arrive at Wiser Times just in time for a stiff drink and a light supper. We would head off to bed feeling we had made good progress on our gifting quest, and happy to be up at the lake enjoying its winter beauty and solitude.
On Saturday morning we would inventory our booty from the trip up and take note of remaining needs. We would then traipse around small shops in Oscoda and Tawas looking to fill out our list. The Ben Franklin in Tawas was (and still is) a favorite stop as it's full of local flavor - Michigan-made trinkets and souvenirs. Shopping there always reminded us of our old Canadian cottage days when we would frequent a similar store in Forest, Ontario, known as Stedman's. This local outing - half shopping half a cruise down memory lane - usually resulted in a few more gift needs being checked off our list.
Then on Sunday we dug in. We took note of the (hopefully) few gift needs remaining. We then carefully plotted our course home to include whatever additional stops were needed to complete the mission. This sometimes included venues along the way, like the Bay City Mall (where we had often shopped in earlier years when my parents still lived in the area) or stores closer to home. We would arrive back in The Pointes by early evening, pretty beat but with the lion's share if not all of our holiday shopping done.
Those were the old days. Today it's different. The change began on one of those Wiser Times trips. One Saturday it had snowed a bunch overnight. Rather than drag out the snowblower and battle our way up the drive to the highway for some local shopping, we decided to see what we could find online. And discovered the modern miracle that has fed the online shopping revolution. Free shipping!
We sat at the big table overlooking the lake with dueling laptops searching various sites (but mostly Amazon) and pretty much completed our list. Still in our pajamas, robes and slippers. Christmas shopping was changed forever.
We still usually make a December trip up north to check on the cottage and enjoy the peace and quiet of the lake. And we occasionally do slip down to Ben Franklin's or the Tawas chocolatier for finishing touches and stocking stuffers. But our Christmas shopping (like most of America it seems) now consists of a couple of extended computer sessions in our family room at home. No crowds. No weather. No lugging purchases in and out of the car. Just a pot of coffee and a lot of keyboarding.
True, our online habit has alleviated a lot of the stressful side of Christmas gifting. But it has created a new monster to contend with. Cardboard. Mountains of cardboard. And its little monster toady Styrofoam. There'll be more about these nemeses in my next post, as they really work their terror as the endgame of the holiday season unfolds. But for now, just know there's a little unfinished business there.
Of course, the final chapter on gifting is wrapping. This can also be stressful. Unless you have a mature case of OCD. Wrapping is where it's at for the holidays as far as I'm concerned. A wide variety of paper, an array of boxes of various sizes, double-sided tape, the occasional ribbon or bow. What could be more fun. Or relaxing. Yes, I am in counseling.
When I get too puffed up over my wrapping prowess, I remember what an old friend told me once about wrapping before tape. They used straight pins to hold the paper in place. Straight pins. Wow. I tried it once, way back when I first heard this. Kept getting blood on the paper. Humbling.
Now let me say that everything that happens during the "gauntlet" isn't filled with stress. There's a lot of fun. Like Christmas parties, office luncheons, classic holiday movies, eggnog, Christmas cookies, and cruises down Lakeshore Drive to see the gaudiest light displays since National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. All good.
I'm just saying the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas is pretty much non-stop. Full of both gotta-do-it and wanna-do-it activities with very little down time to recharge. The batteries can get pretty low. Low enough that when you finally do trudge off to bed Christmas Eve, you're ready to move on. Here's a shot of that "ready" moment at our house from a few years ago, when the kids (and the skycap) were younger, and the attic storage and mall shopping wars were in their prime.
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And one from a couple years ago. New venue (about only six feet from the new storage site).
Still pretty inviting.
When I was a kid, I didn't sleep very well on Christmas Eve. I was too pumped and happy about what lay ahead with the rising sun.
As an adult, I sleep really well on Christmas Eve, exhausted but happy about what now lay behind me - the gauntlet. It's a good place to be. Of course, the sun still comes up on Christmas morning. And that story will be told in my closing post on "The Holidays".
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One note should be added here. The gauntlet was a little more elaborate during our "Christmas in Florida" years, roughly from 2002 to 2012. Those years involved all I've discussed so far plus a major road trip to be with my parents on the big day. We would then close out the trip with a few days at a Disney Resort or down on Captiva Island with our friends Robyn and Dave and their kids.
The challenge of Christmas away from home with kids, of course, was assuring them that Santa would find us on Christmas Eve. That meant Santa's helpers had to pack all the Christmas gifts, without being noticed, in with the luggage, golf clubs, in-flight entertainment supplies, and the usual assortment of stuffed animals (can't go to Disney without Mickey, Pluto, and the gang). Fortunately, during those years we had a series of full size conversion vans (the full story of our life as van travelers was chronicled a few years ago in a series of posts starting with Vans Part 1 - The Tiara Years).
I'm happy to report that because of the big vans, along with a little distraction, some appliance-sized cardboard boxes and few large plastic bags, we were able to preserve the magic. It usually looked something like this just before we pulled out of our drive.
Until next time.
Grosse Pointe Charles
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