Christmas Freak

Allow me to metaphorically sneeze on your powdered sugar and enter the long and storied debate that has divided households, fostered strife among communities, and spurred acts of rebellion and protest, by offering my humble opinion: I think you should consider multicolored Christmas lights.

This is not to say that I don’t like your elegant white string lights or your matching silver garland or your symmetrically hung silver ornaments or your silver reindeer candle holder or your silver napkin holders and immaculate porcelain table settings etched with doves—on the contrary, I would call the aforementioned items year-round décor. But only once a year is it socially acceptable to saw down a tree, bring it inside your house and cover it with shiny things, so why not include a little color and allow yourself the possibility of stumbling across your tree in the middle of the night while getting a glass of milk and being stunned by the beauty of its lights twinkling in a dark room the way I imagine the stars do above the north pole at Christmas, multicolored and unabashedly bright, speckling the ceiling with iridescent gumdrops.