Go Ask Dad's (More) Rules for Decorating the Christmas Tree

Another year, another season, a reprise of last year’s column: More of Go Ask Dad’s rules for the most wonderful time of year when we prop a pine tree beside our hearth (but not too close to the fireplace).

1.     Go local with your tree purchase. There are plenty of great farms right here in the Triangle.

2.     But don’t chop down your neighbor’s tree, even if your dog habitually marks it on his daily walk.

3.     Buy Santa hats for the young and young at heart. (These hats may come from Taiwan.) The Grinch of the house need not participate.

4.     Once hats are donned, ask everyone to pick an elf name.

5.     The recently christened elves, Cookies ‘N Cream and Chocolate Bar, will want to help string the lights. Forbid this! Have you seen the way they dress themselves? Clothes on backwards and inside out! One is still wearing gym shorts in twenty-two-degree weather!

6.     Test the lights ahead of time. While the internet has lots of helpful videos for fixing strands of Christmas tree lights, none of these videos have screaming elf children in the background.

7.     While lights are going on, distract the elves with a hearty dinner consisting of the four food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corn and syrup on spaghetti.

8.     Holiday tunes are welcome. Any tune. Now is not the time for your purity streak to demand Handel’s Messiah. But…

9.     “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” is forbidden. You have got to draw the line somewhere.

10. As for decorating the top of the tree with a Santa hat, opinions will vary widely. The final decision shall be made by the person who puts on the tree lights. She earned it by doing all the tedious work while you were drinking winter ale and pretending not to notice what the elves were eating for dinner.

11. Instruct the elves to hang the heavy ornaments on the lower branches. This decreases the likelihood of said ornaments breaking in the inevitable drop.

12. When the youngest elf, Cookies ‘N Cream, breaks an ornament that was given to you as a boy by your now deceased grandmother, remember how Grandma loved Christmas not for the decorations but for the relationships.

13. The elves want dessert. Don’t we still have Halloween candy?

14. Allow the oldest elf to group ornaments according to their likeness: the angels in a choir, the stockings in a row, all the lame ornaments from Dad’s childhood in the very back of the tree.

15. That said, spacing is key. Ornaments look best when spread across the tree, just like stories from your childhood should be spaced throughout the evening to prevent the tween elf from rolling his eyes out of his head.

16. Hey, who played that certain awful song in the middle of your childhood story?! See Rule #9.

17. The house wolf is older this year and can be trusted around the ornaments – most of them. She’s eyeing that stuffed reindeer who reminds her of a squirrel. Let her chew on a Santa hat, which turns out to be one of her food groups.

18. Hand your faithful, light-hanging partner a glass of red wine, and step back to watch your busy elves. Grandma was right (Rule #12), so…

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all, and to all a good night.

Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of Little Big Moments, a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems. Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.