Take Away the Ladder, Not the Tradition

There comes a Christmas when you look at your parents and realize something has changed. Dad may still be completely convinced that he can climb the extension ladder and hang lights along the roofline. You may be equally convinced that he cannot. Mom may have decorated the house every Christmas for 40 years, but hauling boxes out of the garage, climbing on chairs, wrapping trees in lights, and putting everything away again in January isn't as easy as it once was.

It's tempting to solve the problem by simply doing less. Maybe we don't put the lights up this year. Maybe we skip the garland over the doorway. Eventually, what once took a weekend becomes a wreath on the door and a Christmas card on the counter.

But getting older shouldn't mean the holidays have to get smaller.

The traditions may matter more than the decorations

Nobody needs Christmas lights on a house. We don't need a wreath on the door or garland around the entryway either. What matters is everything we've attached to those things over the years.

Christmas is particularly good at connecting different periods of our lives. A box of ornaments can contain 40 years of family history. A decoration that looks ordinary to everyone else might immediately remind a parent of when the kids were little. The house itself may be where children once came downstairs on Christmas morning, where grandchildren later opened presents, and where family dinners have happened year after year.

The decorations become part of that history. The same wreath appears. The tree goes in the familiar corner. The lights come on at dusk. The grandchildren pull into the driveway and immediately know that it's Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Those traditions don't suddenly stop meaning something because someone turned 75. If anything, there is reason to think familiar rituals and opportunities for connection become increasingly valuable as we get older. Research involving older adults has found that Christmas activities can foster feelings of social belonging, while a much broader body of research has demonstrated the importance of social connection and engagement to well-being later in life.

Christmas lights aren't a treatment for loneliness or depression, of course. But traditions, anticipation, memory, and participation matter. There is a difference between simply knowing that Christmas is coming and watching your own home become part of it.

The problem isn't Christmas. It's the ladder.

Of course, there's a very good reason families start discouraging older parents from decorating the way they once did.

Holiday decorating produces thousands of injuries every year. The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimated that about 14,800 people were treated in hospital emergency departments for holiday decorating-related injuries during the 2022 holiday season, and more than 40 percent of the incidents involved falls. Earlier CDC research examining holiday decorating falls found ladders were the most common source.

And the consequences of a fall become considerably more serious as we age.

So when your 78-year-old father announces that he's going to get the extension ladder out and climb onto the roof with a string of C9 bulbs in one hand, telling him not to do it may be an excellent idea.

The mistake is assuming the next sentence has to be, "So I guess we aren't putting up the lights anymore."

It doesn't.

Take away the ladder, not the tradition.

Sometimes the best gift isn't another thing

This also happens to be the stage of life when buying Christmas presents for parents becomes increasingly difficult.

"What do you want for Christmas?"

"Nothing."

"There has to be something."

"I don't need anything."

And quite often, they're right. They have enough sweaters. They don't need another coffee mug. There are only so many framed photographs a person can display, and there's a reasonable chance the electronic gadget you buy will still be sitting unopened in February.

Perhaps the gift doesn't need to be another thing.

Imagine having their house professionally decorated instead. The lights appear along the roofline again. The wreaths go up. The landscaping glows. Maybe the display resembles the Christmases they remember, or perhaps it's more beautiful than anything they would have attempted themselves.

Most importantly, they don't have to do any of it.

Someone else brings the equipment, climbs the ladder, installs everything, keeps it working, and returns after the holidays to take it down.

Your parents simply get to enjoy Christmas.

And unlike many gifts, this is something they can enjoy again every evening. When the sun goes down and the lights come on, the gift essentially starts over. The neighbors see it. Friends see it. The grandchildren see it when they visit. If everyone gathers at the house for Christmas, those lights become the background of another year's family photographs and memories.

You don't have to live nearby to bring Christmas home

This idea can be especially meaningful for adult children who no longer live near their parents.

Families are scattered across the country. The house where you grew up may be hundreds or thousands of miles away now. You can't necessarily fly home for a weekend in November to dig through the garage, test strings of lights, climb a ladder, decorate the trees, and then make another trip in January to take everything back down.

But you can arrange for someone else to do it.

There's something more personal about that than simply sending something in the mail. You may not be standing in the driveway yourself, but you can still make sure the lights come on.

And perhaps that's what makes this kind of gift different. You're not really giving your parents Christmas lights. You're making it possible for them to continue something they might otherwise have reluctantly given up.

Keep the traditions. Change who does the work.

Aging requires adjustments. Sometimes we have to accept that our parents shouldn't do everything they used to do, no matter how certain they remain that they're perfectly capable of doing it.

But whenever possible, we don't have to remove the joy along with the risk.

The house can still look like Christmas. The wreath can still go on the door. The lights can still come on every evening. The grandchildren can still pull into the driveway and see Grandma and Grandpa's house glowing the way they remember it.

The only thing that really needs to change is who does the work.

So if your parents shouldn't be climbing ladders anymore, don't send another thing they don't need and don't resign them to a postcard version of Christmas.

Keep the lights. Keep the wreaths. Keep the traditions. Let somebody else climb the ladder.