My husband and I were friends before we dated and then dated for several years before getting engaged. I felt like we really knew each other when we exchanged our “I do’s.” We had covered lots of ground in our chats- families, dreams for kids, plans for careers – with one glaring exception.
We had not lived together for a holiday season until our first year of marriage, and I had no idea how much of a Clark Griswald I had just married.
Down the street from our townhouse in DC, the farmer’s market sets up rows of Christmas trees lining the sidewalk for a full city block. It makes that one block feel like a magical holiday forest, and we were so excited to get our first tree together. I realized the extent of his Christmas decorating spirit on that first tree-picking adventure. Chuck picked out a tree at least twice as tall as me for the two of us to carry the several blocks back to our house.
Instead of the easy, sweet stroll carrying a cute little tree that I had envisioned, we had a sweaty, huffy trudge filled with some truly colorful language.
After the first year, you would think we could have called it a day and driven somewhere to pick up a tree. But my husband’s determination in all things holiday is borderline Quixotic. So, every year we walked our happy selves down to the market to get our perfect tree. One year it was too tall for the house- we had fun explaining the random scratch mark on a 12-foot ceiling to our landlord when we moved out. We both managed to fall down separate sets of stairs, trying to get the tree in the house one year. This all on top of the sap we never got out of gloves, the needles that kept appearing in new places through the summer, and the acrobatic feats that it took to keep the thing watered.
But those enormous trees made our house so incredibly cozy and festive that I couldn’t have imagined the holidays without them.
Our differences mounted when we started to discuss lighting. I’m a white lights gal, while Chuck needs the big colored bulbs. I say tasteful; he says boring. I say tacky; he says festive.
Left up to Chuck, our yard would be full of inflatable Peanuts characters and enough lights to land a plane. We joke that he’s not actually allowed to buy decorations without me around to approve the purchases. The phrase “we have enough lights” has never entered that man’s head, and if it doesn’t move, he wants to light it up.
One of the things I appreciate most about my husband is how determined and eternally optimistic he is to have perfect holidays. In his mind, we’re going to be the Norman Rockwell painting with everyone happy and behaving themselves at the dinner table. He tries so hard to make that happen for us and never tires of the work that it takes to decorate the yard, cook an exceptional meal, or build toys at midnight.
Like all differences in marriage, finding middle ground in our decorating styles was important to both of us.
We both care about our home and the holidays and making sure the other person is happy with them as well. Marriages bring a blending of families and traditions; it’s easy to think about making sure everybody has the dish they have loved since childhood (I will bring my own individual-sized sweet potato casserole to Thanksgiving dinner if I have to!). It’s easier to forget how much a certain decoration can bring someone back to their happy childhood memories when we’re trying to put together the perfect holiday house.
Knowing that Chuck’s decorating style comes from a place of wanting to make our home as fun and festive as possible, made working to meet in the middle so much easier and more important to me.
While I may never be ready for inflatables in the front yard, if we can find a way to mesh our styles while keeping the joy for him, it’s worth every compromise. When kids came along, keeping the fun and joy in the holidays took on a new level of importance for both of us.
Some years, we’ve settled on white lights inside the house and colored lights outside, and some years we’ve had two trees- one with white lights and one with colored. I even agreed to the big colored bulbs around the kids’ playground last year. He’s accepted that I’m never going to be down for a life-sized Santa by the front door, but maybe a small inflatable in the back yard for the kids isn’t the worst thing in the world.
