After pulling out all the boxes of Christmas paraphernalia from the attic (we had downsized considerably last year by tossing out/giving away lots of tired, ol’ meaningless clutter labeled ‘Christmas decor’ we’d been dragging from house to house forEVER), my fifth-born Seth had a look at the current inventory, yawned and proclaimed, “I’m sick of this stuff.  Let’s do something new.”  After all, the faded country-Christmas-wooden- cranberry garland is, like, a million years old or something and we’d been looking at it since I could remember.  Tinsel was not happenin’ this year if Seth had anything to say about it, and I had to agree:  it’s time for change.  He wanted to keep it simple, uncluttered and traditional.  Never being one to spend much on holiday decorations, I could easily rationalize dropping  a few bucks at our local discount store to freshen up the scene with some new items for Christmas 2008, especially in light of the fact that my 13-year-old was excited about helping me decorate – whoo hoo!! Most of the time when our boys hit the teen years, decorating the house became about last on the list of ‘exciting times at the holidays for young men’.  Several years ago, I began to import some girls to come and assist if I wanted the process to be festive – girls love this stuff.  The boys were always happy to bake the cookies, frost the cookies, eat the cookies, do the puzzles and watch Christmas movies, but decorating, uh-uh.  So I was anxious to jump right in and let the kid have his way.  ‘T’was the fight before Christmas’ when suddenly a humorous heated debate arose between he and his older brother over topping the tree with the usual lighted angel vs. the common golden star, but nobody threw punches and the star now sits awkwardly atop ole’ tannenbaum.  Let there be peace on earth and good will toward brothers…