Seasonal Decorating: A Thing I Didn't Care For In My 20s Is Now My Thing

(Here's Annabelle, reestablishing her relationship with this sparkly white throw blanket)

*

Since I don't play the Christmas-before-Thanksgiving game, and since I was away over the Thanksgiving weekend, my Christmas decorations are not entirely up yet. I amazed myself by having a short burst of energy for getting started after the drive home on Sunday, so I put away some fall things and got out some "winter" things (technically it's still late fall, everybody, but I'm willing to play along). But yesterday I had some blogging and cybershopping to do, so I didn't advance the cause of seasonal decorating again until this morning. The Christmas tree will go up tonight. I feel like I've cheated myself out of several days of holiday cheer, but I'll be okay. 

I'm not even sure when I got to the point of having specific "fall decor" to take down. I've always done Christmas decorating, and some Halloween, but I didn't really change things up the rest of the time. I started to do the seasonal thing in the last few years, recently enough that even as I put away one set of things and get out the other set of things, I'm thinking to myself "Really? Am I really doing this? Is this who I am now?"

I think seasonal decorating comes on because of feeling different about life as a middle-aged person. When I was a couple of decades younger, I had less life experience, so it was easier to get some novelty. Practically any situation could feel new in one way or another. If nothing else, there was interpersonal drama to keep things fresh. There's no drama now. These days, I may not have seen it all but I have seen most of it. I've tried putting my furniture in most of the possible configurations for this space, and the furniture is nice enough that I don't intend to replace it soon, and I have some storage space, so I am damn well going to freshen things up by switching out some accessories on a seasonal basis, and for holidays. This, I hope, will keep me from sinking into a dreary haze from which I only emerge to note with astonishment that a decade has passed and I don't remember a single thing I did in that period of time.

With that said, I'm off to spread around some shiny baubles! I hope you're keeping things fresh today!