I married a Christmas-holic

What happens when a Grinch meets a Yuletide junkie

Love at Christmas.
(Image credit: iStock)

As a child, I imagined there were two kinds of Christmas-celebrating people in this world. Team Colored Lights were merry souls who tossed bright bulbs around random bushes and burned the Christmas ham because they were busy laughing at Aunt Debra's saucy jokes. And then there was us: Ladies and Gents of the White Lights — a family that graduated from colored lights and charming 30-year-old reindeer ornaments with amputated legs, to torturing a Fraser fir with the weight of 50 glass ornaments from Barney's.

In my family, the switch to subtle white lights and exquisite, fragile ornaments coincided with my parents' separation and my mother's desire to compensate for not-great times with the perfect, storybook Christmas.

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Lisa Fogarty

Lisa Fogarty's work has appeared in Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, The Independent, Redbook, and other publications.