It’s Red & Green Friday at Our House

To so many Americans today is known as black Friday, the day that stores generally go in the black for the year because the Christmas Holiday shopping is what their business lives for. Not from me though. I am not one to rush out to stores when every one else is there. I am that demanding kind of shopper who needs the sole attention of a great sales associate at the least, but really more like a senior manager to wait on me. Knowing that today is not the day to get superior customer service I save today to start my Christmas decorating.

Actually we spent the better part of the day at the farm, visiting with my cousins and their families. As is their tradition, my cousin Brooks and the other men of the family spend the afternoon of Black Friday at the Country Club Lanes, bowling. This started many years ago as a way for the guys to get away from the family after so much togetherness on Thanksgiving and has morphed into, “Dads taking the kids bowling,” so the Moms could get a rest day. My favorite part of it is that they go to “Country Club Lanes.” There is nothing country club about bowling, but for Danville it might be as uptown as things can get.

After my getting to have a good visit with my Uncle Wilson and Russ taking Shay on a big time farm walk we got in the car for the ride home to Santa town. Carter was dreading the only part of decorating she has to do, taking the boxes out of the attic.

Since it was too late to start on the tree I began the “House” decorations. I first have to remove the ‘Non-Christmas” nick-knacks that take up space on top of coffee tables and chests so make room for the various Christmas vignettes. As I was doing this today I noticed that all my regular rooms are decorated in a form of green or red so that when I make the switch from civilian to holiday it all fits together.

I have to say that I did not decorate my house with Christmas in mind. I think that I subconsciously picked color schemes that would “Holiday-up” well. Of course a red entry hall and a red dining room scream Christmas, but most of the year it is not the feeling I get from those rooms.

When I really noticed that I had an underlying Christmas subtext was when I was decorating the kitchen and noticed that even Shay Shay’s bed was a green and white ticking. Now it looks springy most of the year, but it sure does say, “Hey Santa, I’ve been a really good dog,” during the holidays. Maybe this explains why I don’t have any orange rooms. Nothing feels less Christmassy that an orange room no matter how much glitter you throw up it.

So happy red and green Friday. Black may be a good word when you are talking about ledgers, but as far as I’m concerned it is not a very Christmassy color.