Ornament Too Many

“Tree’s a bit cluttered this year,” Xen tells his wife. He flips through his newspaper, casting glances at the tree, watching his wife bustle with ornament after ornament atop a ladder. The tree spans a good ten feet, its tip tapping the ceiling. The ornament’s rainbow décor blots out the tree’s natural green, weighing down its limbs like oversized dewdrops.

“What do you suggest, dear?” Xen’s wife sweeps her hair from her eyes, searching a place for a bulbous red globe in her hands. “Most of these have been in our family for years.”

“New ones are crafted every day.” Xen shifted his reading glasses. “I say, ‘out with old, in with new.’ Snuff out the ones going on a few billion in age, dear.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Xen’s wife moans. Xen watches her fumble, unhanding the ladder. The red sphere still in her hand, she brushes over a couple blue ones, shifts one with lollipop-bright rings, another with a perfect red spot. “They are old, indeed. But they add something to the atmosphere, I think. Like this one here— Opps, oh my!”

An ornament leaps with the branches, sails down, down, to shatter on the floor. Shards of blue dotted brown and blue disrupt the tile.

Xen sighs as his eyes return to his paper. “Don’t worry, dear,” he says with a dismissive wave of his purple hand. “That one was getting dull anyway.”