There's a problem around my house, and it has infested every nook and every cranny. The problem started with my apathetic, teenage son. It then traveled over to my daughter with the speed of a well-constructed espionage network. Now I see the beginning signs blooming up in my wife. The problem is that everyone has simply lost their Christmas spirit! I have an insidious plan, though. A plan involving a cork board, a camera, and a few Christmas t-shirts.
To understand what an awful blow this recent attitude shift has been to the family unit as a whole, you first have to understand how crazy we've always been about Christmas. Even when the kids were really young, the wife and I would put boots in the fireplace ashes and make footsteps all around the Christmas tree to make the youngsters think that Santa had visited the night before. All of that giddy excitement is long gone now, dissipated into the wind of pubescent change. That's why these kids need some Christmas t-shirts with lots of kittens and angels and rhinestones.
I started my plan by putting up one of those push-pin cork boards by the front door. I told my wife is was for familial announcements because I was tired of texting all the time. She bought my ruse (and it's honestly what we use it mostly for nowadays, so I wasn't really lying.) I then approached my dear boy after breakfast and asked him to help me string the outside lights before lunch. Just like clockwork, he started whining about how cold it was and how he didn't have time. Well, my only answer was to throw a shirt in his face. It was one of the worst Christmas t-shirts you could imagine: Santa Clause and his reindeer depicted completely in rhinestones. The look on his face was priceless.
I informed him very calmly that we were instating a new policy that every time someone in the house went against the Christmas spirit, they would have their picture taken in one of our new Christmas t-shirts and it would be posted on the bulletin board until after New Year's. You should have seen the horror on his face. I told him that if he didn't want to comply, that would be fine...but he would lose his phone for a whole week. With as much reluctance as he could possibly muster, he put the shirt on...and then there was a picture of him on the bulletin board just minutes later and he was helping with the outside decorations.
Well, soon enough everyone made an appearance on the board of shame. Yes, even I have spent my time wearing Christmas t-shirts on the board. I may love Christmas, but I can get just as grumpy as anyone else. After a while, we all took it for the joke that it was, though, and had fun wearing these silly shirts and taking really outrageous photos. It stopped being an embarrassment and started being something funny we could show to guests. In fact, my son is in college now and may even have those picture on his Facebook page. The point is that everyone needs a reality check sometimes, even if it's with Christmas t-shirts.
To understand what an awful blow this recent attitude shift has been to the family unit as a whole, you first have to understand how crazy we've always been about Christmas. Even when the kids were really young, the wife and I would put boots in the fireplace ashes and make footsteps all around the Christmas tree to make the youngsters think that Santa had visited the night before. All of that giddy excitement is long gone now, dissipated into the wind of pubescent change. That's why these kids need some Christmas t-shirts with lots of kittens and angels and rhinestones.
I started my plan by putting up one of those push-pin cork boards by the front door. I told my wife is was for familial announcements because I was tired of texting all the time. She bought my ruse (and it's honestly what we use it mostly for nowadays, so I wasn't really lying.) I then approached my dear boy after breakfast and asked him to help me string the outside lights before lunch. Just like clockwork, he started whining about how cold it was and how he didn't have time. Well, my only answer was to throw a shirt in his face. It was one of the worst Christmas t-shirts you could imagine: Santa Clause and his reindeer depicted completely in rhinestones. The look on his face was priceless.
I informed him very calmly that we were instating a new policy that every time someone in the house went against the Christmas spirit, they would have their picture taken in one of our new Christmas t-shirts and it would be posted on the bulletin board until after New Year's. You should have seen the horror on his face. I told him that if he didn't want to comply, that would be fine...but he would lose his phone for a whole week. With as much reluctance as he could possibly muster, he put the shirt on...and then there was a picture of him on the bulletin board just minutes later and he was helping with the outside decorations.
Well, soon enough everyone made an appearance on the board of shame. Yes, even I have spent my time wearing Christmas t-shirts on the board. I may love Christmas, but I can get just as grumpy as anyone else. After a while, we all took it for the joke that it was, though, and had fun wearing these silly shirts and taking really outrageous photos. It stopped being an embarrassment and started being something funny we could show to guests. In fact, my son is in college now and may even have those picture on his Facebook page. The point is that everyone needs a reality check sometimes, even if it's with Christmas t-shirts.
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