A Child Shall Show Them

Last weekend my buddy's family put up their Christmas decorations. Since I had eaten lunch at their home, I was asked to help put them up. Can I just say that putting on the lights seems like such a horrific undertaking, thank goodness his wife took it upon herself to do it. I watched as she tangled, untangled and strategically placed the lights on the tree limbs so that their best shine was going to show.

And then the worst thing happened!! As soon as she was close to the bottom of the tree, we plugged in the lights just for good measure and realized that some of the lights in the middle weren't working. At that point, she dropped everything she was holding and decided to cool off. There was a bit of frustration and a little bit of blaming.

Playing near some of the boxes of ornaments was their young son. He had set up some of the elf figurines, Santa and Mrs. Clause dolls into a miniature North Pole. Oblivious to some of the griping and stress, he held the Santa and made it kiss Mrs. Clause. I heard him say in his best Santa imitation "It's Christmas so we have to be nice to everyone and everyone has to be nice to everyone else".

I realized that this decorating event was suppose to be fun and not stressful. We should have learned the rules of playing together that day from their 8 year old son.