The Return of Mr. Christmas

Once upon a time, there lived a man who loved Christmas and all the decorations that make a place look festive. Mr. Christmas loved decorating his house for Christmas every year, and he couldn't go to a store in the fall without perusing the Christmas section to see if he could find something new for his collection of seasonal items. He started with simple things but soon progressed to animated displays. It got to the point where it seemed that Clark Griswold lived in the Christmas house. There wasn't a surface or wall that wasn't adorned with shiny tinsel or lights and figures. Mrs. Christmas loved decorations as much as the next person, so she just smiled and enjoyed his hobby along with him. He was retired from his job, and she still worked, so much of the decorating was done without her help, except for the tree, of course. Every day she would come home to something else to look at. Eventually, the Christmases had over 30 storage containers of decorations. It was a good thing they had a large storage building for all the stuff! Of course, neither Mr. or Mrs. Christmas loved taking the decorations down as much as they enjoyed putting them up, so they often hired one or more of their adult children to put them away.

Mr. Christmas was always very cheerful and happy about his decorations until one day about five years ago. All that changed a few weeks before that Christmas when Mr. Christmas had a slight stroke. While he had no physical damage from the stroke, he had damage that wasn't so easily seen. The worst was to his emotions. He felt unsure of himself and lost all interest in his surroundings and what was going on around him. He wanted nothing to do with Christmas, and he only tolerated the decorations that Mrs. Christmas chose to put out. It was not much better the next few years. He would grouse about decorating and going to all that trouble when nobody but him and his wife was there to enjoy it. The Christmases would only use a fraction of their vast collection of stuff. Then two years ago, Mr. Christmas had a hip replacement which was followed by serious complications. That year he had absolutely NO interest in Christmas and refused even to have a tree. Mrs. Christmas finally convinced him to allow her to put up the small artificial tree so there would be someplace for the presents to be displayed. That was the worst Christmas season the couple had had in their entire marriage.

It took Mr. Christmas almost a year to recover from that experience, but by last Christmas he was beginning to come to. The Christmases were going to move to a new home, and so they chose a few new decorations and picked the ones they liked best from their huge collection. They gave a few treasured pieces to their kids, too.

This year when the Christmases went to get the decorations they had set aside for the new house, Mr. Christmas just looked at it all and said it would never all fit in the new place. Well, once he got started, he couldn't stop. He was having such a good time, they went back and got more stuff from storage. They bought new things, especially for outside, and now the house and yard are very festive, probably the most elaborate in their neighborhood. Mr. Christmas is back! And Mrs. Christmas is glad to see him having so much fun. Life is good!