I’m not sure how this happens, but I’ve now become the “Clark Griswold” of just about everything. Remember the vacation thing this summer?

{Mike does too}

But look. Christmas was a big thing for me when I was little. I kept my nose in various fantasy books 335 days out of the year, but on December 1st, I didn’t have to look for magic in printed pages. It was everywhere.

Yes, it’s cliche, but really – long after I stopped believing in Santa Claus, I believed that Christmas could make wrong things right. It was – it is – important to me.

Now sit back for a moment and think about me – Sara Mabin – and the things on which I tend to go a teensy bit overboard. I’m sure you can imagine that it’s a little magnified when it comes to Christmas, right?

So when I asked Mike, on November 3rd, to start hauling Christmas decorations up from the basement, he wasn’t exactly surprised. He did, however, say, “You’re not going to start putting them up now, are you?”

“Of course not!” I scoffed. “It’s the beginning of November!”

“Then why am I bringing them upstairs?” he asked.

“Well,” I said, staring intently at the floor, “I kind of wanted to take inventory…”

He was quiet for a minute. He does this when he’s trying to decide if he wants to ask the obvious question, or if he’s better off not knowing. He finally said, “Why do we need to take inventory of the Christmas decorations, Sara?”

“Because there’s a lot of them!” I answered, clearly distressed. “I bought some last year at the 80% off sale, and I need to know what we have and what I still need to get! Do we have enough icicle lights to go around the front porch? I DON’T KNOW! And what about the roof line? What if we don’t have enough to go around the ROOF LINE? We can’t just have half a roof line of icicle lights! Did I buy any clips to put on the eaves? Because if I didn’t, now I’m going to have to pay full price for them, and it seems so ridiculous – if I had just spent an extra $.30 last year, I would have had the stupid clips, but nooooooo, now I’ll have to hit up the hardware store because of my lack-of-planning…”

He didn’t really want to know.

He brought up the boxes – “How many are there?” “Oh, I don’t know, five or six I think?” – and soon we lost the kitchen floor. He watched as I tore through each box – “Nope, this is kitchen stuff. (“We have Christmas stuff for the kitchen?!?”) No, this is for the tree. (“How the hell much stuff can you fit on a single tree, Sara?!?”) I think this goes in the living room – oh look, my Santas! I wonder where the stockings are…” – until I found the box full of lights.

I pulled out two boxes of icicle lights and panicked.

“This isn’t enough for the roof line! Are there any more?!? Are you sure this is the last box? Why did I do this? Why would I only buy two boxes of icicle lights? What could I possibly have been thinking?!?”

As I watched the new puppy lose himself in wrapping paper and kitchen towels, I chewed on my lip. How was I going to solve this dilemma?

“Whoa there, Clark,” Mike said. “We’ll get this handled. I’m sure we can find some more icicle lights someplace. There’s a box of tangled up strands of lights downstairs if you want me to grab them. I didn’t see any icicle lights specifically, but I’ll bring it up.”

He surveyed the red-and-green-tinted war zone the kitchen had become, and I said, “Can you help me carry the box of lights to the car? I’ll sort through them at work and figure this mess out.”

I choose not to be offended by the Clark Griswold comments anymore. Hello, my name is Sara, and I am a Christmas Nazi.