Christmas Queen Admits Defeat

Friday, December 22, 2006

Page 15

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Christmas Queen Admits Defeat

By J’AMY PACHECO

I should be the Christmas queen.

You’d think I’d be an expert. I have a whole collection of books about the holiday – and I’ve read some of them. I have years of experience with people coming for dinner on Christmas Eve. I have special Christmas dishes, linens, doormats and bathroom soap dispensers.

I even have my own tiara.

Yup, you would think I’d be really good at this whole Christmas preparation thing. But here I am again, a few days before Christmas Eve, eyeing the advent calendar the way a condemned prisoner watches the clock tick toward midnight.

I got off to a very good start this year. A close friend had scheduled a pre-holiday cruise and needed to get her shopping done early, so I joined her on many of her shopping trips and managed to wrap up – so to speak – the gift buying for my immediate family. My daughter’s school had a catalogue sale fundraiser in September, so I ordered rolls of holiday paper, ribbon and gift tags.

Before I knew it, Halloween was upon me and I found myself decorating, sewing costumes and holiday-themed vests and hair scrunchies, buying candy and attending parties. I didn’t mind, though; I thought I was nearly ready for the Queen Mother of all holidays.

Thanksgiving soon followed, and it seemed we spent every weekend in November eating turkey at some relative’s house. December rolled in shortly thereafter, but I thought I was sitting pretty.

Then reality set in.

I’ve got a houseful of people coming for dinner this weekend, and my holiday dishes are still packed away deep in the closet under the stairs. I don’t have a single can of cranberry sauce in the pantry.

My Christmas tree has been up for almost three weeks, and still isn’t completely decorated.

Not a single gift has been wrapped, and my “gifts to buy” list has frighteningly few checkmarks beside the names on it. Only about half of my holiday cards have been sent, because I didn’t even order them until Sunday night.

I’m not exactly crazy about my holiday cards this year. Most years, I love sending those personalized photo greeting cards that leave little room for handwriting and therefore, little guilt when they’re sent without a handwritten note. But this year, I lost the photo selection vote, so instead of sending a very cute picture of my little one’s face peeking out from a mound of bubbles, we sent a photo of her dressed in a reindeer sweatshirt with a bunch of holiday lights in the background.

She looks cute, but the problem I have is that the lights are far away and therefore, not terribly impressive. There is also the little matter of the photo’s date appearing in the picture, in neon green numbers almost as large as my daughter’s head.

My husband and daughter liked this photo best of the choices, so I was outnumbered. Since there wasn’t time to take another photo, that’s what we’re sending.

Ah, well. I guess everybody is entitled to send at least one big, dark unexplainable photo now and then.

No question — the season has once again gotten away from me, and I’m feeling that proverbial Christmas noose tightening around my neck.

You know things are out of control when you find yourself using the car’s heater to blow dry your wet hair on the way to work —when it’s only 28 degrees outside.

You know you’re out of time when you stop reading the newspaper in the bathroom and instead use the down time for more productive activities, like affixing the postage stamps to your holiday cards.

You know you’ve blown it when you find yourself buying the only last minute gifts available, and bring home things like Chia Pets, mini head massagers and “The Clapper.”

I could say that next year will be different, but at this point, it looks like this is how the holidays are going to be around here.

I suppose if I get really desperate for gifts, I can wrap up some of those holiday how-to books. It’s not like they’re doing a lot of good around here.

Meanwhile, I think I’ll give my tiara a shine, and park it on my head for Christmas.

At least one thing will be decorated.