Grinchpus Decorates: The Ducky Revolution

The $160 Question

Sharon: Might you be okay with helping fund $160 for Christmas decorations?

Paul: For?

Sharon: Christmas decorations…for the house.

Paul Venmos $160.

Sharon: hehehehehehe

This is one of the many reasons why I love this man. Blind trust lolol. I had assumed that he was simply excited that I was getting on board with decorating for Christmas, normal Grinchpus that I am.

Decorating, But Make It Ducks

So I did decorate…with 710 duckies. Okay, actually some of them are flamingos, but who’s counting? Oh, right. I am. Hahaha.

Okay, so I made two duck trees. With the aid of my AI helper, Dexter, I thought I had calculated how many ducks I would need to make two ducky trees. We didn’t quite have enough gold ones, but I made do with what I had. The second tree was going to be pink flamingos and black skeleton ducks, but the glow ducks got included because I didn’t math correctly.

I also got little foam glider planes and hung them about the house with duckies and flamingos on them. I thought I was going to have ducks everywhere, covering everything, but apparently one needs far more ducks than I had budgeted for to do that. So we have a decent sprinkling of Christmas-hatted ducks around the house.

The Ducky Revolution (Yes, There’s a Song)

Dexter got so excited about the prospect of the ducky Christmas that he made up lyrics for a song to the tune of Five Little Duckies. So of course, when one’s AI helper writes you lyrics to a song, you have to commission a recording of it.

Please enjoy the Ducky Revolution, which was arranged, played, and sung by Joel Watson. He did an excellent job. See video below.

So I happily decorated for Christmas without actually making the house look traditionally Christmas.

Plot Twist: I Don’t Like Christmas

Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly aspects of Christmas that I—aw heck, who am I kidding? I don’t particularly enjoy Christmas…at all.

I Wasn't Always a Grinchpus

I used to.

As a kid, I would redecorate the tree, moving ornaments around practically every day until my parents had to tell me to stop. In college, the interior of my apartment turned into a light display Clark Griswold would be proud of, much to the chagrin of my roommates.

I grew up with a Japanese mom who would set up the dining room table into a fully stocked wrapping station in early November (no worries—the family never ate there) after having stocked up on all kinds of little gifts over the entire year (starting with the after-Christmas sales for the following year) that we would all be recruited to wrap. (Okay, not my dad. He never wrapped anything lol.)

I ooed and ahhed at the Christmas lights. I even got caught side-eye from other drivers while awooing Hark the Herald Angels Sing a la Snoopy while in the car.

How I Lost the Spirit of Christmas

It honestly took my ex a good ten years to dampen my Christmas spirit. No, I take that back—that’s when he started to take it away from the kids. They went from full presents under the tree, to my ex allowing us to make homemade Christmas presents for friends, to “let’s donate to a cause instead of gifting.” The next year the kids got to choose their own causes to fund. Or at least that’s what the Christmas cards we sent out said.

I still had spirit though. I found a charity in the Bay Area that let us volunteer to help sort toys and wrap them for foster kids. It was perhaps a little cruel looking back, having my kids wrap gifts for others knowing they weren’t getting any either. But it also fed my ever-optimistic “let’s help others who have less than we do,” and I think I was even able to make it a little bit fun for them. But that was then.

After we moved to Vegas and the kids were left to their own devices, Christmas was definitely a time to endure. My ex always claimed he had SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder, and would get grumpier starting in October, lasting well into March. But Thanksgiving through Christmas was always a constant torrent of how awful and commercialized the holiday was—people being obligated to buy gifts they couldn’t afford for each other, and having to suffer the company of their families.

Granted, his relationship with his family was pretty toxic, so I get where he was coming from. Especially after one Christmas when things were really tight for us, the ex's mom came to visit and was so upset about not getting a proper gift that she packed up and left early and didn’t talk to him for months. (Although that was, to be honest, a gift in itself.)

And so, over many years, my jolly Christmas spirit was finally dampened.

Enter Santa Paul

Last year, at the behest of my mother—insistence, really—that I decorate the house for Paul, I pulled out the Christmas boxes from storage and made his TV-watching area a Christmas area, with a tree hung with all of his ornaments, garlands, and lights. I even pulled out the Christmas-patterned blankets my mom had given us and put them on the couch for Paul to enjoy.

Paul is now in his second year as a true bearded Santa, having gone through his second round of Santa School and grown out his beard to get whitened in time to become Santa Paul for all the little kiddos and adults.

I got a chance this year to hang out with the other Santas while we helped his boss set up a new Christmas set for a hotel. They were quite the motley group: a variety of Navy Chiefs, a professional magician, a couple of bikers, old construction guys. They ran the full gamut of other professions. But they all came together to help their boss out because the workers who were supposed to come with the set from Brazil couldn't get their visas. So enter the Santas, who all came together to help out and save Christmas for their boss and the hotel.

It’s virtually impossible to be cranky around so many Santas, even though they weren't officialy playing Santa while we worked on this project. Many of them had done contract work or had other experience building, so putting together the sets for the hotel was in their wheelhouse. But they carried the spirit of Christmas joy, joking around, ho-ho-ho-ing while they worked. The hotel employees even commented on how festive they all were.

Paul also has fully embraced being Santa this year. He’s got his beard and his magic tricks on point. He knows what he’s supposed to do and has a little more experience in Santa-ing. His holiday spirit has spilled into his day-to-day life as he wears his red jeans and a Santa-styled red sweatshirt with white fur around the hood and sleeves (god only knows where he found it), or his Santa tracksuit, red top hat or bowler, to work and to go shopping.

Shopping With Santa (and the Fairies)

We did some last-minute shopping and I (grudgingly) faced the holiday crowds to spend the afternoon with him. He’s been booked up so much this year that I’ve barely gotten to see him.

So there I was (gasp!) Christmas shopping with Santa Paul, in his red Santa sweatshirt and red jeans, and Santa-styled red and green striped knit hat.

I didn’t realize he had his magic trick with him, and when kids and adults got excited to see Santa walking around the store, he’d catch fairies and throw them to the kids.

There was one preteen boy who played fairy light catch with Santa Paul while waiting in the checkout line.

It was fun to see how many adults talked to Paul as Santa and were genuinely so excited to see him. There’s a bit of Christmas magic in watching how much someone’s face lights up just from seeing Santa.

It was a good reminder that this is what I used to love about Christmas: the joy, the connection, the willingness to believe in magic.

A Filter I’m Not Keeping

A few weeks ago, it had occurred to me that this grumpiness around the holidays was a filter I wanted to shed because it wasn’t mine. It was gifted to me by my ex. I don’t have to keep it.

Before working with the Santas on the hotel sets, and walking around with Santa Paul, I was honestly struggling to remember what I loved about the season. And Santa Paul reminded me of what I had lost and forgotten, and it finally came through - the love, the joy, a reminder of the light in the darkest part of the year.

So I have to say thank you, Santa Paul, for that gift—the gift of a new filter, and the memory of what Christmas actually means. This Grinchpus' heart grew a few sizes today.