After thanksgiving I would spend the following day decorating the house. It usually took me a good day or two days as bedrooms, bathrooms in addition to kitchens and living areas had to have their mark of red and green.
About 6 years back as I pulled out bin after bin, box after box to decorate, I started thinking. As I pulled out decoration after decoration I started looking at prices left on boxes, I started thinking about the cost of all these items. The time spent gathering these items. I then started to consider the humble birth of the Savior. The simplicity of it all.
At that point I considered homes where efforts are made to put one gift under the tree. I considered children in other countries who struggle to have clean water, a good meal once a day. I thought about the waste of all this and it made me sick. Spiritual and physically.
Right away I grabbed some cardboard boxes and I started stuffing decorations inside. If it didn't have to do with the Savior I got rid of it. Snowmen were gone. I streamlined the amount of decorations. Limiting the living room to nativities. In the kitchen I kept just a few things to go on my window ledge with a bit more flexibility to kid appeal.
No more decorations in the bathrooms. Out with many of the Santa's. Only ones with sentimental appeal.
I started thinking about a family that might enjoy going to goodwill and picking up decorations and their excitement at finding these nice items and it became easier to load up the cardboard boxes. The heaviness in my heart started to lift. Children in countries without water, food, immunizations would benefit from the sale of these items at Deseret Industries (goodwill). I started to feel light.
(The storage room was lighter - I believe I took over 7 boxes to goodwill.)
One of these years when my girls are a bit older our family is going to do something amazing for Christmas.
Each year since this enlightenment, as I pull out my items and look at the wise men, at a small lamb, at Mary and Joseph and the humble babe Jesus, I am excited. It is not a task. It has been easier to let go, this year I didn't do garlands on the banisters, it still looks pretty, I just didn't want to spend any more time doing it and wanted to be with my family (and a little two year old would have probably messed with them so why not keep them down this year).
It is not with drudgery that I complete the task of decorating, it is with excitement. That joy in the season has returned. That simplistic joy in the birth of the Savior and this time of year in which we celebrate that. It is now with joy that I look at my home and feel happy that I chose the better part.
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