Our usual family tradition has been to put up the Christmas tree and decorations on the 1st of December. This year, a spanner has been thrown into the works – a cute yet active spanner named Miss Berry.
There is absolutely no way that I could have a tree up in the lounge room full of sparkly decorations and expect her to not be at it constantly. I looked at getting a play pen to put the tree in but they were very expensive and frankly I don’t think it would’ve worked as Miss Berry would have figured out how to climb over it in about a week.
After spending most of November trying to think of a solution I realised I was thinking about this the wrong way. I was holding fast to our traditions when really our family had outgrown them. I was assuming that the tree must go up on the 1st. Previously, our household was just 2 and we could have the tree up all December but now our household is 2 plus the aforementioned spanner and holding onto a tradition that is not practical anymore would do nothing but give us all huge amounts of stress and make Christmas miserable. It would defeat the whole purpose of Christmas; enjoying time with friends and family. It’s time for a new tradition to be created. One that will suit our family of 3. One that will make everyone happy and make our home a place to enjoy Christmas.
So, out with the old and in with the new. Now we are going to spend December decorating the house with garlands, quilts and good ornaments up high so our spanner can’t break them and on Christmas Eve we will put up the tree and Boxing Day will be the day the tree comes down.
Our plan is that there will be so much happening on Christmas Day that Miss Berry will be somewhat distracted and will leave the tree alone and I won’t have to spend December chasing after her and constantly telling her no. By decorating the rest of the house we can keep up the Christmas Cheer for all of December.
I think our new tradition sounds great – in theory anyway. I’ll let you know how that works out for us.
1 comment:
Yep, that sparkly tree is just tooooo intriguing for littlies :-) We ended up sticking as pussy willow branch in a vase in the middle of the dining table and hanging ornaments on it. It looked nice, although we had to move the chairs away so the tots couldn't climb up. It kept the presents out of the way too!
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