It's Time to Sell the Christmas China

Thankfully despite the stock market roller coaster ride we aren't selling off our worldly goods to support the three kids we have in college. It's time to sell the Spode Christmas china for a better reason: I'm over it.

That darn china was really important to me for almost twenty years. I thought it was the ultimate splurge to have designated dishes. I registered for them when I got married and racked up several place settings. When we got divorced it was one of three things he sued me for (besides alimony); the others being a picture frame and a missing part from the Salad Shooter.

I gave him the frame. I threw the missing part away thereby rendering him unable to shoot his salads with anything except the AK-47 he kept under the bed. (My inspirations were the nuns in The Sound of Music when they took the Nazis' car parts) As for the Christmas china, that's where I drew the line.

I knew the only reason he wanted half the china was because he knew how important it was to me so I had to make a choice --  Plan A: give it up or  Plan B: spend ten times what it cost in legal fees to keep it. I opted for plan C: tell him there were only six place settings (there were eight), give him three, keep five. Score one for me! It wasn't until I stuck the deal that a judge friend of mine said I had another option -- breaking every plate in half would technically satisfy the letter of the law.  Wow, how sweet would that have been?

A day after the divorce was final I could have bought back his three sets (a message he relayed through his mother). I politely declined (remember the AK-47?). Then, in a strange twist of fate I almost got the other three settings back after he re-married and divorced a couple of months later. I met his second ex at a PTA meeting. She asked if I had Christmas china while I was married because evidently his lawyer had merely changed my name to hers and forgot to change the property demands. He was suing her for my Christmas china. She said there was a chance he threw it in with her things that he dumped out the door. If so, she would not only give it to me, but we'd have a nice dinner on it, take a picture of the two of us flipping the bird and send it to him. That would have been sweeter than taking a hammer to it!

For the next several years I used that china every day between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I drank coffee out of the little cups on the fancy saucers, I ate cookies off of the bread plates. I celebrated my victory for a month every year by eating revenge off of those Christmas tree plates. Ho! Ho! Ho!

I continued my tradition for nearly twenty years, even after I remarried and served  my dear, sweet husband food on plates tainted by my past. And then, one day as I unpacked them from the move I started looking at the dishes in a whole different light.

I no longer thought of them as a trophy. The smug anger of my small victory that I'd celebrated all those years was gone. They were dishes. Things. Things that reminded me of unhappy times. Things that my husband didn't deserve to have in our home. So yesterday, with a happy heart, I loaded them up and took them to my local consignment shop. Someone will get a good deal and create their own holiday memories. I'll get to start mine with a clean slate plate.

This is an original 50 Something Moms post. Lollie also blogs at Philly Moms.