Decorating Mom and Dad’s House:  One of our family customs during the holidays is to help each other with Christmas decorations.  Mom and Dad always get priority, and the entire “army” shows up to help at their place; it’s always a fun afternoon.
 
Decorating Mom and Dad’s house is carefully choreographed.  Most years, we decorate both the inside and outside on the same day.  As I’ve mentioned in the past, my parent’s condo, (actually all of my siblings’ homes) becomes “play grounds” for my many projects and do-it-yourself ideas.  These projects could be electrical, networking related, Christmas decorations, or some other do-it-yourself type project.  At the same time, my parent’s condo is so tech’d out that sometimes even I need a play sheet to figure out what we called what for Alexa to do what Alexa does.
 
As for Christmas lights, my parents’ condo is always lit like the Griswold family home.  We have lights on the tree and bushes, on wreaths, and on the back deck.  Most of our outdoor lights are color-changing sets, and they create a beautiful look as part of our Christmas light show.  The lights fade from all-white to multi-colored, and most of them are synched together through a few modules that force the color changes.  With the amount of lights, I’m surprised some of their neighbors don’t complain they can’t sleep at night (remember you’re dealing with the Griswold family)!  This year, I wanted to up the ante a bit by bringing out one of the parish lifts to reach the peak of this one big tree in front of their condo.  Usually, we use a long pole to decorate the tree, but I wanted to go all out this year.  So plans were created.  Ideas were put in place.  Conference calls were made with the siblings and parents.  My brother-in-law Lonnie helped me bring the lift to the condo.  The family was scheduled for the Sunday before Thanksgiving.  All was put in place; we just hoped and prayed the weather would cooperate; and it did.
 
As soon as we descended upon Mom and Dad’s house, we divided into separate “teams.”  One team helped my mom inside.  Their task was to put up all the inside decorations, from decorating  the tree to swapping the fall/thanksgiving décor  to Christmas.  Another team focused on the deck lighting.  Another team was assigned to take care of the front and garage bushes.  A final team was assigned to the big tree in front of the condo.  Dad was assigned to testing the lights.  I’m not sure why I didn’t do the testing over the summer.  Unfortunately, we got snagged a bit because of some dead light strings.  This wasn’t too well received at first by the “General” because I didn’t have many extra sets of the color-changing LED lights on hand.  So, the “General” ordered the field units to meticulously test each light in order to repair the one or two lights that were causing sections of the strands to go bad.  Our project became a race against time because we had to finish the decorating before dinner arrived and before it got too dark.
 
The next challenge was to figure out how in the world I was going to use the lift to get to the top of the tree.  My nephew J.J. bought some plywood from Home Depot so we could use the lift on the lawn.  So the plywood was put in place, and he and I started to work on the big tree.  After about 30 minutes of putzing with the lift and trying to make it work, we decided the lift was more of an obstacle than a help.  I’m sure the neighbors in the tightly spaced condo block were having a field day watching us busy bees do our thing. Then add a commercial lift to the mix, and you’d get the sense this group was SERIOUS about their Christmas decorating!  In retrospect, I wish I would have video recorded our adventures inside and out to create a time-lapse video of our efforts.  As I mentioned, after about 30 minutes of putzing around with the lift, we decided to ditch it altogether and simply use the super long pole we’ve used for several years.  Everyone was focused on their respective areas, and everything was humming along extraordinarily well.  I used the lift to make some minor final tweaks at the top of the tree, but everything was falling into place and it looked absolutely beautiful.
 
Darkness was slowly descending on the landscape, and as a result, we were able to get all those lights on and marvel at the work that was done.  It really looked great.  As we were cleaning up, one of the neighbors drove by and thanked us for the work we do every year to light up the street.  She even noticed we not only added some new things this year but decked out the tree a bit more than in the past.  I loved her final comment: “It gets better and more beautiful each year.”
 
I then drove the lift back into the garage, and we started the task of getting all of the Christmas bins back into the basement.  The outside teams then joined the inside teams, and each team marveled at all the work that got done in just a few hours.  Both inside and outside looked absolutely spectacular!  The hungry crowd was slowly gathering in the kitchen and great room to enjoy our Chinese carry-out dinner.  It was another fun-filled Sunday family gathering.  As we were marveling at the ultra-fast transformation that took place inside and outside, my niece McKenzie looked around and exclaimed, “Grandma, it’s as if Christmas suddenly threw up in your house.”  Yes, it was Christmas decorating day at the Griswold’s.  God is good.
 
Christmas Greetings:  I wanted to take this opportunity to extend my Christmas greetings and prayers to you, our faithful and regular parishioners.  I am grateful for the many ways you share your time, talent, and treasure around the parish.  Through your extraordinary generosity, we are changing many lives and doing much to deepen people’s relationship with the Lord!  Thank you for all that you do to help us be such an amazing parish!
 
May the Christ child, the Prince of Peace, enlighten your hearts and homes with the warmth of his light and love!  Know you will be remembered in my prayers and masses this Christmas.
 
Enjoy the week.  Know of my prayers.  Merry Christmas!
 
In Christ,
 
gmb
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