Christmas on the Move

Friday, December 18, 2009

Page 11

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Christmas on the Move

By J’AMY PACHECO

It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

—Eddie Pola & George Wyle

When my family decided to move to a town 50 miles away during our daughter’s winter break from school, it seemed like a good idea.

The decision was made so that our daughter could make a clean break and start at a new school in the new year. It made so much sense at the time.

What we failed to consider was the fact that we’d be moving over the Christmas holiday.

This is significant, because I’m really big on Christmas. Just putting up our artificial tree takes days. This is partly because we use enough lights that that the tree can be spotted by astronauts orbiting Earth, and partly because we buy new ornaments every year and therefore have a lot.

Many of the ornaments are animatronic, with trains and taxicabs that race around snow-covered hills, animals that beat little Christmas drums and dancers that spin in circles. One even has the Seven Dwarfs parading in and out of their cottage while Snow White looks on approvingly.

Since most of these have to be plugged into light sockets that aren’t on blinky strings, it takes an extraordinarily long time to finish our tree.

I also normally host the big family holiday dinner. I used to do this on Christmas Eve, but when the family got so big that the night’s festivities started making me too tired for Christmas Day, we moved it to an earlier date.

I usually have 30-some people over for a sit-down dinner complete with Christmas dishes. Not the paper kind– the kind that actually have to be washed before AND after use. It’s a big production.

I spend hours shopping for and wrapping gifts, then sorting them under the tree by when they’ll be given away. We make cookies and pies, put electric candles in our windows and replace everyday paintings with holiday-themed artwork. Even the construction paper wreath my daughter made in kindergarten finds a place of honor during the holidays.

The move changed everything.

For the past two weeks, my daughter and I have been living out of a suitcase at my mother’s tiny home in a retirement community. My husband has been sleeping at our new house while trying to finish the move that seems to never end.

Our Christmas tree and ornaments are somewhere in our new garage, buried amongst stacks of boxes awaiting our attention. If you’ve ever seen the government warehouse in the final scene from “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” you have a good idea of what our new garage looks like.

If it weren’t for the week’s worth of Christmas socks in our suitcase and the cardboard box of gifts in my car’s trunk, you’d never know it was Christmas around here. My daughter, who normally has at least three advent calendars going, has to make do with some Disney holiday-themed window clings stuck to the car for her Christmas cheer. Everything else is in a securely-taped box.

Nothing’s wrapped, nothing’s unpacked, and nothing’s festive at our house right now. Fortunately, a friend has been keeping my daughter after school. She’s been playing a Christmas-themed chess game with my friend’s son every evening. At the moment, that’s as good as it gets.

The weeks leading up to the holidays tend to be more stressful than, say, the third week in July. Throwing a big move into the mix was a huge mistake.

To top it off, my Internet service provider was apparently unable to comprehend the simple concept of relocating our Internet service from one address to another, and instead completely disabled my e-mail account.

(I won’t mention the company’s name, but I will say that it’s a phone company whose name rhymes with “horizon.”)

The pressure of the last few weeks came to a head with the “Sorry, your account has been disabled” message and I cracked. I started crying, and couldn’t stop. Nothing says “Happy Holidays” like Mom having a breakdown.

But the problem has been fixed, and my daughter and I will soon be moving into our new house. I’ll unpack what I have to, then take a break to put the tree up. Our new neighbors have invited us to a holiday block party, and we’re going to go.

It will all work out. I’m sure of it, because as the song says, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” Or will be, anyway.