I Found the Nicest Group of People in America. Their Secret Obsession Is Now Mine.

"Christmas, as the old poem goes, comes but once a year. For some people, that is deeply, deeply unfair. Why should they get just one month a year-or two or three, in modern retail time-to gather with their friends and loved ones, to think about peace and goodwill toward their fellow humans, to eat cookies, and, most of all, to bask in the lights and decorations they keep hidden away in storage the rest of the year?"

"Even I, a Jewish person who doesn't celebrate Christmas, am not immune to the joy and silliness of what is euphemistically known as the holiday season, even though everyone knows there's really only one holiday that matters. Which is why, on this August afternoon, I am in Lombard, a suburb about 20 miles west of downtown Chicago, wandering the junior ballroom of a Westin temporarily transformed into a winter wonderland"

"This is the museum room, the heart of the annual convention of the Golden Glow of Christmas Past, an organization devoted to collecting and studying antique and vintage Christmas memorabilia, in which collectors have assembled, on tables and in glass display cases, museum-style displays of their most prized Christmas decorations. Make no mistake: This isn't the crap you buy at Target, the half-assed white lights or plastic blow-up snowmen that never actually stay inflated."

Some people keep Christmas decorations and celebrate beyond the season, enjoying lights, treats, and goodwill year-round. A Westin ballroom in Lombard becomes a winter wonderland of lights, reindeer, Santas, sleighs, miniature snow-covered villages, and both plastic and aluminum Christmas trees. The Golden Glow of Christmas Past convention centers a museum room where collectors display antique and vintage Christmas memorabilia in glass cases and on tables. Collections include early-20th-century Nuremberg cookie tins, sheets of 1970s Christmas-themed postage stamps, and Victorian-era sleds. Collectors assemble these items with great care and often over multiple generations. These displays emphasize rarity and craftsmanship rather than mass-market decorations.

Read at Slate Magazine