Irreconcilable Holiday Differences

Let’s start with a visual.

This is my husband’s idea of Christmas decorating:

And here is mine:

Before we had kids, he would totally indulge in my Christmas decorating extravagance. He thought it was cute and charming, and was willing to dangle from the roof to hang twinkle lights for me. The man even let me put up a hot pink and lime green tree in his house. Now that is love.

Since Monkey and Mimi have come along, and our house slowly morphed into Toys R’ Us, the hubby’s patience has worn thin with my love of all things Christmas and my excessive need to show holiday joy through lights, glitter, and tinsel. *cough, cough* Ebenezer Scrooge, anyone?

Since marriage is all about compromise (sham), we have a new tradition, the “Christmas Bargaining”. Here is why this went down, last year I made the whole family drive out to a tree farm where we dragged a newborn Mimi and an exhausted Monkey through fields of trees. I read somewhere that huge Husky dogs would happily carry your tree to your car. Amazing, right? Imagine the holiday cheer! We needed to do this! The only thing is that you cut down your own tree….I sorta left that part out when telling Hubby we NEEDED to do this.

As always, he was the doting husband, and we arrived at the tree farm where we quickly learned that the Husky dogs were taking a break and we (and by we, I mean Hubby) would have to cut down the tree, drag it back several hundred yards to our car, and attach it to our roof—-All. By. Himself. Hilarity did not ensue, he was not thrilled with this idea, and some may say, he even turned a shade that resembled the Grinch. But I had two babies, a video camera, and my best Christmas face on. Who could ever say no to that sweet image? Not that adorable boy I married so long ago J

Long story even longer, shit hit the Christmas fan and I was banned from ever suggesting such a ridiculous idea when all I was willing to do was sit in the car and feed Goldfish to the kids.

So this year I agreed to getting the tree from the place that all you do is point and pay and they do the rest. And my hubby agreed to this: