The spirit of being the new kid

I probably know about 273 librarians well enough to judge where they would each stand on this. If I were to line them up according to likelihood of being named poinsettia point person for any occasion or system, I would put myself third from the end of the line. (Actually, the librarian who, in my mind, would come in last place passed away several years ago, so that makes me the penultimate in line now).

But that is what I now find that I am. And as my friend Elizabeth would say, my CanDoPig bests my Scrooge. (See “Those Can-Do Pigs,” by David McPhail, or, alternatively, “A Christmas Carol,” by Charles Dickens).

Happily, I have inherited a process and a formula for poinsettia acquisition, not merely the job title. Decisions are based centrally by number of floors to be poinsettiaed, and locally by aesthetic desires for small, medium, or large plants. How librarian-like! It seems that we can apply cataloging practices to decoration as well as to the ordering of knowledge.

To further that aspect of the assignment, I created a spreadsheet (using the Christmas Chocolate template someone else has designed; that one uses a formula involving number of staff, of course, rather than building size). This should take some of the romance out of the holiday spirit, but it doesn’t—or maybe I am still back a holiday from the rest of Canada and so it’s just that I’m seeing the details as novel rather than negotiation.

And then the staff newsletter comes out and I see myself in living color on the front—wearing a headdress of felt reindeer antlers (the jingle bells on them aren’t very clear) and brown deer ears. It seems that Christmas spirit isn’t to be negotiated here so, as the picture shows, what can I do but smile?

Tags: Christmas decorations