Christmas in November

Christmas decorations in NOVEMBER?! Most exclamations of incredulity would be well justified but there is always an exception to every rule. In this case, that exception is Mr. L.L.'s house in Jerusalem, Israel. Mr. L is an extremely active public speaker and world traveler so when he comes home, naturally the masses follow too and make it extremely difficult and hectic to even consider decorating the house with Christmas cheer when he is in residence. So when Mr. L is away in North America the perfect opportunity presents itself for decorating his humble abode with all the gaiety of the holiday season. I'll have to admit though, it felt pretty strange setting up and decorating a Christmas tree on November 16th and most of the cheerful spirit normal to the decorating of a tree was severely lacking.

When I spoke of Mr. L's house as a 'humble abode' I'm afraid that was with a bit of sarcasm mixed in. It's not huge by any stretch of the imagination, but it is so crammed full of artifacts from ages past that antique dealers would find themselves in heaven were they to darken his door. In fact, while decorating I noticed a magnificent old grand-father clock in one of the corners. When I remarked on it, one of the guys I was helping mentioned that 'Oh yeah, that clock is older than U.S.A.' WHAT?! As it turns out the clock is somewhere around 350 years old. Gulp!!

Anyway, the fellows who stay and keep L company were tasked with decorating the house before L returned but not without a delicious twist. L loves his decorations so much that they have to be in exactly the same location every year! We're talking exact locations! 'No, oh just throw that Chinese lantern up there and let it dangle.' No, there are three specific Chinese lanterns in the corner of the living room and they all have to hang to a specific length. How on earth would you know what length it was last year to this year? I'll tell you, they have pictures of exactly how the decorations are to go. So when I got there to assist my mates I was handed an eight-an-a-half by eleven sheet of paper with four pictures on it illustrating for me exactly where the decorations went (and they had a whole stack of sheets with pictures on them). Oy vey! It was almost like putting a puzzle together, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

The other monstrosity was the Christmas tree. Holy toledo! That thing has more baubles, birds, beads, lights, pomegranates, candles, ornaments (both glass and straw), than you could ever imagine!! I'm sure I'm forgetting some ornaments on that thing too. It's a fake tree and is actually tied to a hook in the wall to prevent it from following Pisa's example (though this one would go in a much more rapid fashion than the one in Italy). I'm told that it did fall last year and made a royal mess. Absolutely no joke, that tree has easily over 125 decorations littering it's branches. It's beautiful, don't get me wrong, but it took a long time to decorate! Good thing it will be up until the middle of February. Hey why not? If you expend so much effort into decorating, why not let it sit for three months!!

The blokes who take care of L are a bundle of fun! I mostly spent time with R and N as we plugged away at the beautification of the living room (we even spilled over a little bit into the dining room). Both are from Britain and have sweet British accents. It was amazing, after talking with them for awhile, I found myself talking in a similar manner (nowhere near as well though). I was quite tickled because I've tried to talk with that accent before but without a good model of how it is actually done. As it turns out, I'm not as bad as I thought I was at speaking like a Brit. (note to readers.....don't bother asking me to speak like one...it's got to come out natural like...haha).

Thus ends my adventure of decorating for the Lord's birth well over a month in advance. I guess there really is something to waiting until a little closer to 'get into the spirit' of Christmas. Yeah, it's called AFTER Thanksgiving! Cheers!