Scrooged: The Terror of Tinsel

Hello, everyone!  Gather round!  This is what I believe to be the fifth annual POP CULTURE ADDICT'S ADVENT CALENDAR!  I know, it seems hard to believe, isn't it?  

This is Day #1 of the calendar, and the theme for this year is wrapping paper!  The designs are from actual rolls of wrapping paper that I have in my house right now!  I can't guarantee that I have 25 different rolls, but at least I can get off to a good start!  I'm trying to be creative here.

And sometimes when it comes to creativity, it might mean that you talk about things that might not be all that positive.

I came up with the idea to feature an entry each week for the month of December about things that we might not enjoy about the holidays.  Because let's face it...for all the wonderful things that Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa can bring...there's just as many things that we don't like. 

Hence the reason for the creation of SCROOGED THURSDAYS!

(Don't worry!  The rest of the month will be filled with love, joy, peace, and happiness...I hope anyway.)

So, how do I kick off this event?  Well, let's talk about trimming the tree.

Now, when it comes to actually decorating the tree, I absolutely love it for the most part.  Sure, the occasional glass bulb gets smashed to smithereens, but many of the ornaments on my tree have a special story behind them, and it's really a tree filled with memories.  The stringing of the lights can be a little bit stressful, especially when they won't turn on.  But it's a necessary evil and the end result is a thing of beauty.  At least it's better than candles, and much safer!

No, my only issue with tree trimming is a decoration that is completely optional.  A decoration that until recently was a family staple for generations.  A decoration that I absolutely despise to this day.

Can you say, death to TINSEL?  Because I hate it.  I hate tinsel, garland, sparkle strings, or whatever you call it.  It's tacky, messy, and difficult to use.

Seriously, the idea of tinsel on a Christmas tree just screams 100% tacky.  I'd rather do what our ancestors did and make popcorn strings or construction paper chains to drape on the tree.  It would at least look more homey and less like you wrapped aluminum foil over the branches!

I think my main reason for disliking tinsel when I was younger was because it was just one more thing you had to wait for before you could even so much as put one ornament up.  Obviously we couldn't start decorating the tree until the lights were up and the angel was placed on the top of the tree.  It would be silly to put ornaments up before the lights.  But then after the lights went up, we had to wait even longer because we had to put the tinsel on the tree.  I mean, seriously, we had enough ornaments to put on the tree that we really didn't need the tinsel at all.  But my parents insisted that the tree would look better with the tinsel.

What it looked like was what might have happened had Diana Ross and the Supremes shredded their dresses and poured the remains all over the tree.  There was so much tinsel on it that it was almost as if we had gone down to Las Vegas to buy the tree!

Never mind the fact that if we happened to brush up against the tree that we'd get tinsel all over ourselves.  Tinsel in the hair.  Tinsel on our ugly Christmas sweaters.  Tinsel on our shoes.  I equate tinsel to be just as annoying as excessive glitter on Christmas cards.

And when Christmas is over and it's time to take the tree down, does that mean that our tinsel problems are over?  Nope.  If anything, they just get worse.  For starters, my parents were very thrifty when it came to Christmas decorations and they saved the same blue and silver strands of tinsel year after year for what seemed like twenty years.  And to make matters worse, we were still finding pieces of tinsel all over the house four months after Christmas was over!  And forget about trying to suck up the tinsel that had fallen on the floor with the vacuum cleaner.  Once tinsel falls on the floor, it NEVER LEAVES.

I think over the years though, my parents realized that putting the tinsel on the tree was hard work, and taking it off the tree was even harder.  So, once the strands of tinsel that they had eventually broke, they never bothered to replace it.  I don't think I've put tinsel on a Christmas tree in about fifteen years.  I don't miss it at all, and I think that I have enough gold and silver ornaments to put on the tree to make it shine without tinsel.

It may be Christmastime in Tinseltown again...but I don't care if I ever see any tinsel ever again!