MARY ANN FITZMORRIS / L’Observateur / November 21, 1999

Tis the season, I noticed, as I walked around the mall today; Christmas decorations are going up everywhere. It even smells like Christmas in thestores.

This throws me into a panic. I begin to feel the pressure to create a”magazine house” Christmas display, and to start on all the Yuletime Martha projects, both of which leave me feeling wholly inadequate. Iconsole myself with the fact the Martha’s staff is considerably better than my own.

They’re certainly more dependable.

No, my workers quit as soon as the “fun” starts to resemble work. And whocan blame them? Mom screams too much.

We are forced to resort to Christmas in a can. This began many years agowhen the children were small, and collecting innocent pinecones was all we could handle. We sprayed them gold and tried to figure out what to dowith them. They wound up in a basket. These were the days before Marthaand Tuesday Morning.

Now I’m motivated. We may not have snow dusted aspen logs under ourtree, but we have canned snow pine cones bonding with their gold sprayed cousins on a bed of glittering burlap finery, which is far jollier than the Christmas tablecloth that we swooped under the tree for years.

The yule worthiness of the pine cone project made me ready to move on to bigger Christmas projects. Last year I decided to deck the halls withboughs of holly, as the song suggests. Holly is not very cooperative.I can assure you I was not singing fa-la-la-la-la while I did it. Afterusing nearly an entire roll of duct tape that I tried hard to disguise, I returned to the room a few hours later to see the holly lying defiantly on the floor, sprouting wings of duct tape.

A friend of mine does not bother with these attempts at creativity. Shepays for creativity. She does not shop at Tuesday Morning. She payssomeone who shops at Tuesday Morning and comes in the afternoon to fill her home with the holiday spirit. She does not wrestle Mother Nature. Shepays someone to wrestle Mother Nature.

Christmas tree topiaries grace the doorway. Christmas tree branches thathave been chopped into subservience cascade from the edges of her steps.

Candles are woven into wisps of greenery which sport no detectable signs of tape! Twinkling lights grace the mantle.

Wait a minute! I’ve just discovered the underlying reason for my failure at Yule decorations! I have no fireplace! A fireplace is essential for “magazine house” Christmas decorations! No wonder that holly was uncooperative. I was trying to force it to do unnatural things!This mantle requirement was not lost on my mother. Every Christmas wedragged out a cardboard red brick fireplace. If memory serves mecorrectly, there was even a cardboard fire to place in front, but I believe that shredded the first year. Our stockings were hung with stick pins. Asan extra bonus, the flat surface on top provided a handy resting place for mail and toys.

We didn’t know better; those were the days before Martha Stewart and Tuesday Morning.

This was not the only fake fireplace available at Christmas time. A friendof mine remembers her mother tuning the television to a local station which offered a real electronic hearth; a full screen fixed on a roaring fire, complete with crackling sounds. No smoke, though; there was noInternet.

This friend now has a huge fireplace and mantle, as well as a subscription to Martha Stewart Living. Still she is unable to turn her home into that”magazine house” wonderland. I’m going to have to give her the name of myother friend’s holly tamer. He can make her yuletide brighter; or at leastprettier.

At our house, though, Christmas isn’t Christmas without those family projects. It’s the tradition that matters. I fondly remember my mother’sred brick fireplace. Call it Christmas in a box. If I’m lucky, my kids willbe hit with a wave of nostalgia whenever they see an aerosol can.

You just can’t pay for memories like that.

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