The Story of the Fake Smile

We were out of town the week of Thanksgiving, and that's the time we usually decorate for Christmas.  I try to have everything up except the tree by the Sunday after Thanksgiving, waiting a bit longer to buy a real tree so that it will last through Christmas each year.  But since we were gone, Christmas decorating happened later than normal.

And this year I decided I was ready to go back to having a fake Christmas tree - a prelit tree would be so much faster to set up, and we wouldn't have to keep up with watering the tree and cleaning up the needles, and we wouldn't have to go out and find a tree and then find a place to dispose of it, and wonder if it would survive through Christmas, and the fragrance was never very strong anyway - so when we got back in town after Thanksgiving I started looking for one.  But they were much more expensive than I expected and I didn't want to pay the price for the tree I wanted, and didn't have time to go to the store where they were on sale at a reasonable price.  So the day came - the only day for the next week when we would all be together to decorate the tree - and we still didn't have a tree, and Ben was at Costco and offered to just buy a real one, and it would be our last year.  So I agreed and Ben bought a good tree and maybe there would still be a way we could decorate it that day.

But when he got home and I went to find our tree stand, it wasn't there.  Apparently, I'd decided after last Christmas that I was finished with real trees, and given away our tree stand.  So then Ben had to go buy a tree stand, for this real tree, that I was pretty grumpy about dealing with in the first place.

The tree sat in our garage for three days.  Then one evening we got the tree set up in the house, and told the kids that since we would all be together Friday evening, we would decorate it then.  I thought I'd put the lights on the tree ahead of time so that on Friday we would only have to deal with ornaments and such, but I just never made it happen.  We have plenty of lights, so I thought it would be easy enough to put the lights on Friday evening when we got home from our Ward Christmas Party, maybe while the kids were putting on pajamas and we were listening to familiar Christmas songs.

Well, after a tough week with the kids that culminated on them missing out on the movie night I think I was more excited about than they, we arrived at the Christmas party that was advertised as "dinner and a 10-minute program."  We walked in a bit late because we'd come straight from Eliza's gymnastics class and saw right away that there weren't any tables where we could all sit together.  And I just wanted to leave.  But Ben hadn't arrived yet and the kids were already scatterring and I didn't make a quick getaway before our sweet nextdoor neighbor invited half of us to sit at her table while the other half sat at the next one over.  Then I saw Ben, told him where some of us were sitting, and hurried to the bathroom to have a good cry and (try to) get control of myself.  When I emerged a little later, our entire family had squeezed into the table with our neighbor, so when I joined them that meant 5 adults, 3 teenagers, and 3 children sitting at a table meant for 8.  But everyone was happy and eating dinner and since we weren't going to watch the movie after decorating the tree when we got home anyway, we decided to stay for the 10-minute program - which was good, since our table was right in front of the stage and it would have been tough to sneak out.  Well, the program lasted for at least 30 minutes.  And then Santa came.  So the party ended up taking about an hour and a half.

But the party was good and we were glad to be there and try to get to know some of the people in the ward better.  I started working on the lights when we got home and saw immediately that I was very wrong about how quick and easy that would be.  We had a few strings of lights with green wires, two of which were colored lights and two of which were white lights.  Only 1/3 of one string of white lights worked.  And I have a strong preference for white lights on a Christmas tree.  But we strated stringing the colored lights on, and saw that the two strings weren't enough for the tree.  So we took them off and tried to mix in the 1/3 string of white lights to make it go farther but they were in such a fragile state that as soon as you bumped the wire, the white lights would turn off.  So we dumped the white lights.  And I was paralyzed with frustration.  Ben and Cat tried to talk me into using one of the many strings of lights we had that had white wires, but I knew that would look terrible on the tree.  And Ben offered to go buy more lights (which would also mean decorating the tree the next day) but I was adamant that we not spend any more money on this real tree that nobody wanted in the first place.

So we finally decided to just use the two strings of colored lights and spread them out enough to cover the tree.  And it looked adequate.  And then we started putting ornaments on and the kids loved seeing their old ones and our old ones and it was exactly as it should have been.  But the frustration from the day, from the week, from my life, from this tree made it so hard for me to enjoy it.  I think this is one of my biggest weaknesses.  I have such a hard time recovering from disappointment and frustration.  I know it's a significant failing.  And I try not to let it happen, but it keeps happening, and my family usually ends up paying the price.  I'll keep working on changing this, and maybe when I'm all grown up, it won't be a problem anymore.

Can you tell that's a completely fabricated smile?

It was after 9:00 before we finished decorating the tree and I had a whole list of other things I wanted to do that night, but by the time the kids went to bed, I decided to take a time out and I put myself to bed for a little while too.  Once my time out was over, though, I realized I didn't want to do anything else, so I just went to bed for real.

The next day was better and I had a better attitude, but I was still frustrated with the house and my family and Christmas.  By Sunday morning I couldn't help but think of something a friend had said earlier in the week, "I hate Christmas."  At the time I thought, "How can she say that?!?"  But on Sunday morning, I found myself saying the same thing.  I didn't want to feel so stressed and unhappy, but that's exactly how I was feeling.

I went to choir and desperately hoped there would be an opportunity to have a real conversation with someone who cared, but there just wasn't.  So I pulled up my big-girl panties and kept going.  I took a little time to clean up the kitchen when I got home before meeting my family at church.  I appreciated the meaningful discussion during Relief Society.  Cat and I made some quick Christmas treats right after church.  We did some Book of Mormon reading together.  The whole family spent the evening with cousins, talking and playing and enjoying tacos.  The kids got to bed on time.  Then Cat and I did facial masks and watched videos on lds.org.  And when she went to bed, I sat down and read a few articles in the new Ensign.  And by the time I went to bed last night, I decided I didn't hate Christmas anymore.  I attribute it to good Sabbath Day observance.

This isn't the kind of post I usually publish on this blog.  Ranting soul-bearing stories are usually reserved for my personal blog.  But I feel like this one belongs here for some reason.  Maybe it needs to be preserved as part of the narrative for this Christmas Season so that I can be better in the future.