I don’t know if I’ve mellowed out a bit this year, or if I’ve just stopped paying attention, but I haven’t really been bothered much by the early appearance of Christmas decorations. There are always a few places that just can’t wait a decent amount of time, but lately I seem to have become more accepting of anything Christmassy as long as it’s at least after Halloween. Even if my usual personal preference is to wait until after Thanksgiving.
For our own home, however, I have never been an early decorator. Since The Mister is a firm believer of keeping Christmas reserved for December, this usually worked out well for us, but this year, during a cantankerous evening earlier this week, I broke and pulled out the Christmas tree box as a diversion for Hawkeye. The kid loves Christmas trees and Santa and has been pointing them out to me everywhere he spots one. If it remotely looks conical shaped, it gets called a Christmas tree. And if you ask him what Santa is going to bring him, he will tell you “Christmas tree”.
Last year’s spot has since been occupied by low bookshelves for the toddler so I had to get a bit creating with the dinig room table and was thanking my lucky stars yet again that I ended up buying one of those corner Christmas trees some years back. Essentially, I have about one third of a tree, which fits neatly into a corner and takes up less floor space. As it happens, the only remaining corner was badly in need of some more light anyway, so I broke some more and put up the Christmas lights as well for the bonus illumination.
The Mister wholeheartedly approecd of the slightly early arrival of the tree as a means of tantrum diversion. I have, however, been resisting decorating it until it actually hit december with the exception of one small item.
Again, to appease the tiny dictator who, I think, is going through a growth spurt and is a little cantankerous this week, I let him put up one item on the tree. It was more out of curiosty than anything even because last week, on my first day back in the office after being sick, I came in to a package waiting for me from my Guardian Angel of Chocolate in Vienna.
This time, instead of the ubiquitous Rum Kokos balls, I got chocolate shaped rum barrells with golden thread attached to the wrapping. Like, totally meant for actually hanging on a Christmas tree. There were more sweets for the tree in there which may or may not be filled with eggnog (I don’t speak German, ok?), chocolate covered nougat and marzipan, and the amazingly divine but sadly seasonal rum truffle wafer hearts.
So in a fit of slight madness, I opened up the box of rum barrells, tied the threads together, and gave one to Hawkeye to put up on the tree.
It was only slightly later, as I was impataiently watching him carefully decide where to put the treat while he clutched it fiercely in his little hand, that it occured to me that giving a three year old a large chocolate treat filled with liquid rum might not have been my brightest idea. In the most diplomatic way possible, I urged him to … lighten his grip and maybe… hurry up hanging it.
All in all, a crisis (and a tantrum) were averted and I did not need to prevent the said three year old from licking rum flavoured sticky filling off his fingers. After bedtime, I stealthily moved up the single decoration to a higher branch that might just strategically be out of his reach.
First stop this weekend is to pull out the shatterproof baubles.
The Feathered Rose 