As you know, gentle reader, every year about this time (or sometimes later), we come across a Christmas decoration that we did not pack away when we put up the Christmas trees (although at Nogglestead, putting up is really putting down as the Christmas storage is under the stairs on the lower level, not in the attic as was the case in Old Trees).
This year, the Christmas Straggler was not the plaid stocking that appeared on the desk.
For some reason, my boys got stockings with their names on them from somewhere. Their church youth group, perhaps? And as I was cleaning some stuff out of the car, I found an additional plaid stocking that made its way into the parlor, but not under the stairs yet.
No, the 2022 Christmas Straggler is a two-time winner, and the original Christmas Straggler from 2012: The little elf bearing presents.
For a couple of years running, he has made it back into the boxes of decorations; however, this year, he was on the mirror in the dining room, and as my beautiful wife gathered the obvious decoration (an obnoxious 12 Days of Christmas thing with a thin dowel tree where you hang tiny ornaments representing the lyrics of the song, a gift from my mother-in-law that has become a fixture in that mirror over the holidays), she (my beautiful wife) overlooked the elf, perhaps used to seeing it on the clock for a year lo that decade ago.
At any rate, although I have identified the Christmas Straggler, I have not packed it away with the Christmas decorations yet. Perhaps I will wrap it in the plaid stocking when the time comes, probably in several weeks when I dust the house again.
(Other years’ winners here. Perhaps I should give the annual post its own category.)
