A Lim tradition...

let me describe to you as such:

Every year, on the day AFTER Thanksgiving, ensues a game of tension between my mom + me vs. my dad. It seems that EVERY year, my mom and I want to start decorating our home in Christmas-like fashion by putting up our tree, hanging up wreaths, and carefully setting out other staple trinkets and toys (i.e. porcelain snow-capped village that used to light up , and my personal favorite, a manger replicate complete with a baby Jesus that we lost and replaced with a teeny tiny cabbage patch figurine.). Likewise, EVERY year, my Dad, utterly put off by the idea of the bajillion artificial pine needles falling unto our hardwood floors, all of which he will inevitably have to vacuum, keeps his poker face on, stoically staring at our flatscreen tv, turning his back on our slant - eyed (no asian reference there) glare.

And of course, before the passive agressive war of the squint-windowed and the iron-willed spine erupts, my Dad huffs out into the garage, and agressively pulls out every boxed, cartoned, tissue paper covered ornament out of storage, into our living room.

Then, out comes the 20 year old fake pine tree with the real wood trunk ("They don't make them with real wood these days," proudly states Mama Lim as she plugs in the age-old relic that is starting, barely, to lean over a bit perilously. "These days, it's all fake, fake, fake." -- which incidentally, doesn't make our tree any less fake.), on goes the pink + ivory + maroon color schemed ornaments ("I have never seen a tree ornamented as classily as ours," preens Mama Lim, as she hangs a porcelain burlesque dancer up), into the straw basket goes the cabbage patched Jesus, carefully placed are the tiny fake lamps and the hand painted couple whispering (who knows what!) secrets in each other's ears onto the bed of cotton snow, and all of a sudden, I find that I am busy uploading my mobile pictures up onto my facebook wall.

And so, the annual battle is momentarily placated by the goodwill generated by the slow fade in and fade out tree lights, the smell of the holly wreath that never seems to dissipate no matter how many months it's been stored in that tiny cabinet, and the inevitable sense of familial bonding that comes from having given in to family tradition.

and maybe a twinge of complicated anticipation of the NEXT family tradition that will occur undoubtedly on Dec. 26th -- when again, the three of us will be split into an uneven pair vs. stag over how long the decorations are to overstay their calendar date this year.