My Smart Mouth: A disorder for the holiday season

Do you have small children who are destroying your life and your perfect tree this holiday season with their clumsily placed homemade ornaments? Do you, too, spend hours after they go to bed rearranging the ornaments on the tree and wondering how many years you’ll have to look at that construction paper wreath, and the snowflake made of glitter dipped popsicle sticks, hanging beside your handmade Murano glass bulbs from Italy? (Can you scrap them after elementary school, do you think, or will you have to wait until the kids move out? Will they expect to see them when the come home from college on holiday breaks?

Perhaps, like me, you are one of the millions who suffer every holiday season from POPD - Perfect Ornament Placement Disorder.

To be honest, I never knew this was a problem until I got a couple of kids and witnessed firsthand the design disaster that is a “kid” tree. For years I carried on with my meticulous decorating techniques, blissfully unaware that the carefully themed, balanced, well-lit and sparkling symbol of holiday cheer gracing my living room was a sign of my mental and emotional instability.

Now that I have been made aware of the problem, I suspect it might be hereditary. Looking back on childhood Christmases of years gone by, there was a decidedly martial air to the tree decorating in our house, with Mom presiding like the five-star general of tinsel. It was unacceptable to just throw handfuls of the stuff at the problem - instead, you had to peel each strip of clinging, floating tinsel from the wad and place it strategically and evenly over a bough, resulting in a tree that glittered uniformly from star to stand as well as, in my case, a lifelong distaste for the stuff.

Since I now live in a house full of other people and am no longer the sole master of my domain, my inherited need for order has become an issue. The first year, I vocally voiced my discontent throughout the entire tree-decorating process and, once the tree (with it’s one meager string of colored lights and haphazard arrangement of homemade ornaments and foil garland) was deemed finished, averted my eyes every time I entered the living room. The second year, I decided that for the sake of my mental health, the best solution would be to have two trees – one in the living room and one in the dining room. I decorated the dining room tree to my specifications, with my own breakable ornaments and no Dad-imposed light limit, and still averted my eyes every time I entered the living room.

This year, Dad decreed there would be compromise, and only one tree. With a sinking feeling, I suggested perhaps the kids could go through “their” ornaments and sort out the ones they think should be on the tree, and then we can incorporate them with mine, in a compromising manner.

“I kind of like your ornaments better than ours anyway,” declared my stepdaughter, that absolute Princess amongst children. “Maybe we could hang ours on a tree outside.”

My tentative stirrings of holiday hope and joy at this suggestion were ruthlessly squashed as the pile of mismatched and hand-crafted ornaments destined for the communal “family” tree grew.

“I can see the despair in your eyes,” my man commented cheerfully, with what I considered to be an appalling lack of empathy, as he added a wooden Norwegian skiing boy, missing both feet and skis, to the pile.

By the time we’d finished sorting ornaments, it was time for the kids to go back to their Mom’s for the week.

“So, do you guys want me to wait for you to decorate the tree, or…?” I asked, trailing off hopefully. My stepson, that compassionate gem of a child, must have heard the desperation in my voice and took his cue.

“I don’t care what you do,” he said disinterestedly. But, alas, my brief elation at this permissive attitude was not to last.

“Yes,” my heartless little tyrant of a stepdaughter said with authority, making me wonder if perhaps POPD might be learned behavior, rather than inherited, after all. “Don’t decorate anything, inside or outside, until we get back.”

I wish I hadn’t asked. As the saying goes, it’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission, and I am, after all, suffering from a condition; one for which there is, as far as I can tell, no cure. Although, I suspect the symptoms can be somewhat ameliorated by the liberal application of holiday “cheer.”

Oh, well, only about twelve more years of this to go. I might as well put on some Christmas music to drown out my inner screams (and the tinkle of breaking glass as the six-year-old drops yet another of my mid-century vintage glass ornaments onto the hardwood floor) settle in, and enjoy a hot buttered rum or six. Bottoms up!