Okay, so we call a decoration we find after we’ve packed up the Christmas the Christmas Straggler, and I’ve documented many of them over the years here on the blog.
Now I’ve started a new tradition: Sometime before Christmas, I pick up a little decoration and put it on the mantel upstairs to see if anyone notices. It started in in 2023 and continued in 2024 and 2025 with little village figurines from Walmart. Since I was at Hobby Lobby on Monday for the project I mentioned yesterday, I picked up a little tchotchke (Christmas 50% off) and placed it in the customary spot:
It’s a little light-up Christmas tree which I don’t expect to light up.
Every year, after, the family indicates they have seen the early decoration pretty soon after I put it up. I dunno. I expect my oldest will spot it since he is fairly observant and spends a lot of the day pacing a loop through the living room/parlor/kitchen/dining room, so he has plenty of time in that room.
But I need a term for this tradition. The Christmas Intruder? The Christmas Sooner? The Christmas Tailgator? Pre-Straggler? I am open to suggestions.
And it occurs to me that this tradition might well be remembered more by grandchildren in a couple years than my actual children. After all, I started it when they were or were near adulthood.
One of these days, and by “days,” I mean “years” (but not too soon), we will cull our Christmas decorations. We have so many that we do not put out, ones that we received/inherited but hold no memories of our childhoods. And some from our childhoods are breaking down. So another culling, but perhaps not this year–although when we take the decorations down, it will be next year. We will see, I guess.
