Christmas Cops

My One True Love and I have a pitch for a reality TV show. It will be called something like Christmas Cops and it involves us driving around the suburbs of Canada (possibly in a black SUV - hybrid, of course) and finding people who still have their Christmas decorations up in February, March, April, May etc. Then, in a burst of drama, we knock on people's front door, identify the culprit, perform a Christmas Intervention (by, say, unplugging the reindeer on the front lawn, taking down the front door wreath, deflating the blow up snowman and throwing it all in their garage/basement/cupboard.) We may then take them to task for their slackness all the while freeing them and their homes to be whatever they want to be until mid-November when the whole sorry mess can be dragged out again. Granted it's just the beginning of an idea but I think it has promise. It's a little bit home improvement and a little bit self improvement. What's not to like?


Not that I'm against Christmas, let me be perfectly clear. I am a fan. However, there is a time and a place, indeed a season, for everything and I do believe that our plastic Santas need a decent rest between gigs. I blame my mother. She was always gung-ho in the first week of January to remove all traces of Christmas as a way of moving symbolically into a New Year. Now that I am living in the coldest province in one of the coldest countries in the world I am feeling a bit more lenient about Christmas lights at night post-Christmas. We need something to cheer ourselves up with when night continues to fall so early. However, even here there comes a time to unplug and pack away.


This was our Christmas "tree" this year. I wish I could take a better photo of it but it is essentially a collage of Christmas-themed fabric stretched within embroidery hoops and photo frames, peppered with be-glittered twig wreaths, a string of red sequins and some other Christmas treasures hung on the wall in the shape of a simple tree. All of it, save the fabric, I'm delighted to say, was thrifted. Where the idea came from I do not know, but as inspiration hit (so I'm not devoid of spontaneous inspiration after all) I just knew it was going to be this year's Christmas craft project (that I make my OTL participate in against his will). We were pretty chuffed with it, I've got to say.


I guess it's time to take it down before we're visited by the Christmas Cops.