Christmas in May

So today, in between shoveling spoonfuls of chocolate chip cookie dough in my mouth, I managed to go out on our front porch and remove the Christmas lights.

It was a big day for me.  Those Christmas lights have leered at me for a while.

A long while.

As in two years.

Yep, in a fit of Christmas spirit in 2009 I wrapped our deck with Christmas lights and I haven’t looked back since.

For two years I told myself it made our home look festive.  Then a few weeks ago I ran into a realtor who mentioned how hard it is to sell a house that doesn’t take Christmas lights down because it looks like the homeowners wouldn’t have done home maintenance if they were too lazy to remove Christmas lights from their house.

Oh.  It’s not a sign of festivity, it’s a sign of laziness.  Hm…

Since then I’ve looked at those lights as beams of personal sloth.  And, even though – as one person on facebook encouraged – I was almost at the halfway point of the year and could then claim I was just celebrating Christmas in the summer (which is about the time retailers start selling Christmas goodies these days!) I determined I was going to remove those little glimmers of holiday ineptitude.

So, today, I did it.

I braved several cobwebs and had a full on battle with the strand of ivy which had grown up over the cord, but I did it.

The lights are down.  We aren’t bad grown ups anymore!

The sad thing is, with this much effort going into the removal process I’m just not sure I’m going to have any energy left to put them back up come Thanksgiving Day (which is the official first day of Christmas decorating in my home).

Eh.  We’ll survive.

Tell me – have you ever left Christmas decorations up for a shameful length of time?