It’s Christmas Eve and I hope you’re relaxing in your living room with the lights of the Christmas tree twinkling in the background, your shopping finally finished.

If you’re anything like me, your living room will be far from that tranquil scene tomorrow morning. Many of us will face hills of discarded wrapping paper, cranky children wading through that paper and at least two sticky spots where somebody spilled egg nog.

Instead of snow falling outside, we’re running the air conditioner, wearing shorts and our flip-flops are by the back door.

No designer Christmas tree in our living room – there’s ornaments held together by hot glue, macaroni angel ornaments that are over 30 years old and most of the McDonald’s Happy Meal ornaments from the last 20 years ago.

Some of the ornaments are hanging by paper clips because, despite buying a new box of hangers every year, I can’t ever find those boxes when we’re decorating the tree.

There’s red, blue and purple miniature colored lights on the top two thirds of the tree, but the bottom is solid white lights. The reason is simple – I forgot to buy another strand of colored lights. Instead, I bought three boxes of small white ones, but we’d already put the colored ones on the tree so we left them alone.

I don’t think Martha Stewart would approve but the tree has a quirky look I’m starting to like.

This year, though, the Christmas tree stands straight and tall. That’s because I wasn’t involved in putting the tree in the stand. Usually I’m the one holding the tree while my husband attaches the trunk to the stand.

He’ll keep asking if the tree is straight, and I think it’s straight until he says he’s finished. Then I step back and realize I wasn’t holding it completely straight. I’ll go down with the ship proclaiming the tree – no matter if it’s at a 15-degree angle – is completely straight.

My daughter in law, who’s a lot taller than I am, stepped in to hold the tree which she did perfectly. She’s now earned the permanent title of Santa’s helper.

There’s curling ribbon on all of the presents, and that’s been my decorating stamp for the past decade. I’ve tried other embellishments, but they didn’t work out.

There was the year I used twine as ribbon because I saw it in a magazine. We had to get my husband’s Swiss Army knife out to cut the strands off every single package. I thought I was going to get strung up by that twine by the end of the evening.

Another year I thought about using real ribbon until I saw satin ribbon was $2 for 10 feet of ribbon. And then I found curling ribbon – 500 feet for $1.88. We have every color of the rainbow of curling ribbon.

I did wrap the presents that go out of town in a different color paper but only because I bought a jumbo roll of green wrapping paper three years ago. That paper never runs out no matter how many presents I wrap.

When there’s no longer presents underneath the branches, the tree will look lonely, but the smiles on the faces of the people I love when they open the boxes will remind me that gifts aren’t meant to stay pretty under the tree – they’re not worth anything until the recipient sees what’s inside.

But tonight, before one of the holiest days of the year, I’m making myself stay awake until I hear Santa’s sleigh pass overhead.

And then I’ll pray “Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.”

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.