The Museum of Christmas

We're off to Copenhagen for the weekend, so hopefully when we get back, I'll have a new museum to review/praise/trash.  In the meantime, there's something I've been thinking about the last few days that I'm not sure warrants a full post, but is more of "food for thought."

We pulled all our Christmas tat out of boxes last weekend to decorate our (tiny) flat.  This caused me to start thinking about the practice of decorating for Christmas, acquiring new Christmas tat, and reorganising your things to make room for a huge stuffed Santa in the entryway.  I think this practice closely resembles museum curation, and it's interesting that this seems to be the only time of year when most people put on their "curator" hats, rearrange their furniture, and put up their "special exhibit" of ceramic snowmen.  You can learn a lot about people by studying the way they decorate for Christmas.  Some people are "themey" (all angels, all Nativity scenes, etc), others are restrained (you know the people who have a map for where to put ornaments on the tree, and only allow elegant silver baubles), others are all inclusive (my mom is part of this school of thought: anything Christmas-related is coveted and curated by my mom!).  You could take the analogy so far that it becomes ridiculous, but it's worth considering the way this act of decoration makes you engage with the objects in new ways each year, and how you see things differently depending on the events of the previous year.  

Whew.  All of that deep thinking made me exhausted.  I think I'll go have a hot chocolate.