Sometimes we have to defy those silly “rules” about what’s appropriate for a particular time or season.
Several years back, I was shopping in the late winter and happened upon a long- after-Christmas sale. A lone ornament caught my eye: a sparkly chandelier. It sported plastic crystal droplets and faintly-pink sparkles and fake candles; it was adorable and unusual and 75% off. So, although it had absolutely nothing in common with my then-red-and-gold themed Christmas tree, I bought the ornament.
The following Christmas season, I hung the pink chandelier ornament from the tip of my real dining room chandelier. Now, here I must pause to explain that I detest my dining room chandelier. It was there when I bought my little condo but, as I mentioned in Coloring Our World, the previous owner of my home had, shall we say, unusual taste in décor (read: no taste at all). Although obviously very expensive, the chandelier is totally out of place in my ivory and pink and Wedgwood blue dining room. One might say it resembles something borrowed from a medieval castle. One might…if one were being polite. But the darned thing serves its purpose—to light the room—and I am nothing if not thrifty and practical, so I have never replaced it. Nevertheless, I only tolerate the chandelier. I don’t really like it.
So hanging the shimmering little pink chandelier ornament from the tip of the medieval monstrosity was an act of defiance. It said, “This is what you’re supposed to look like, you ugly thing!”
Weeks later, as I was packing up all my holiday decorations (or, as I’ve always called it, “Taking Down the Christmas”), I missed the chandelier ornament. A day or two later, I discovered it still hanging from the tip of the feudal fake. I reached to remove it, but hesitated. I didn’t want to bother rustling up the correct box of Christmas decorations out in the garage; I didn’t feel like wrapping the ornament and putting it away. So I just left it dangling there, the chandelier-on-the-chandelier.
Of course, this wasn’t the first time some small bit of Christmas detritus had been overlooked during the post-Christmas cleanup. I recall the time that a plastic icicle lived an entire year in a plant pot where I stuck it after stumbling upon it days after the tree came down. Then there were the two small silver stars that I discovered in a corner, probably batted there by a marauding cat as playthings. I stuck them on wires and wore them as earrings.
But, returning to the chandelier, later that summer, as my young great niece and nephew, Mya and Kai, ate lunch with me one afternoon, Mya glanced at the glimmering little decoration and asked me, “Is that a Christmas ornament?” A bit abashed, I agreed that it was. I explained I’d forgotten to take it down in January and decided to just leave it up. “I like it,” Mya pronounced judiciously. “It’s sparkly!”
Enter the holiday season of 2020. Although I did not splash out on anything extra, I decorated early and fiercely, trying to brighten my spirits during the sadness of the lonely, anxiety-ridden pandemic Christmas. I brought out decorations that I hadn’t bothered with for years, when my motto had been, “If you put it up, you’re gonna have to take it down!” Now, in the Year From Hell, taking everything down a month hence seemed a small price to pay for having some light and beauty around my home. So the shimmering little chandelier came out of hiding once more and returned to the tip of the ugly lighting fixture.
But on January 2, sighing as I packed away holly garland and lights, tree skirt and ornaments and icicles and candles, I deliberately and with grave intent left the glistening little chandelier ornament hanging from the tip of my lighting fixture. Because it was bright. Because the house, stripped of all the holiday decorations, felt as bare and sorrowful and depressing as the continuing pandemic. Because that tiny bit of sparkling joy felt just a little bit like hope.
Hope… The hope that I will, next December, still be here to unpack all my Christmas things and splash them about the rooms once more. The hope, now showing promise, that the vaccine will bring an end to the horror and devastation of Covid-19. The faint and dimming hope that a new administration will be able to somehow mend the divisive anger and furious accusations of a divided American populace, unifying us once more. The hope that those I love will be safe and protected through whatever the year hurls at us.
So the little chandelier will remain hanging above my dining table for another year.
Because hope sparkles.
If this post resonated with you, you might also like “Taking Down the Christmas”,
which was posted January 3, 2018, or “Puffy Socks Finds a Home (Sort of a Pandemic Story)”, from June 17, 2020. Scroll down the page to the Archives link to locate them.
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