Three weeks. That's the longest I have EVER been outside of this box and it's probably the longest I will ever be outside of this box. 

For only three weeks in a year of 52 am I and my fellow Christmas decorations used before we are shoved back in box, squashed down amongst pointed fairy lights and prickly pine cones, stuck in a mass of itchy, scratchy tinsel, not to see the light of day for the rest of the year. 

Over the festive period, I see so much joy and I spend three weeks in bliss, stretching out my old, sore limbs. But just as I have relaxed and loosened up enough to fully enjoy the celebrations, that joy is followed by a banishment to the cold, damp, cold-smelling, far-off reaches of the house. These short periods of happiness only make the quickly following banishment so much harder to bear. You cannot miss what you never had, but I have had happiness and freedom and I am reminded of it every time I start to forget. 

I experience so much discomfort, every year. How would you like to be cramped and unable to move so much as a strand of ribbon for 49 weeks?

It's not just how uncomfortable the box is, either. It's the boredom of waiting with no indication whatsoever of how much time has passed. Sometimes I think I have been forgotten but then I remember that I am always cared for, if only for three weeks of the year at a time. So then I wait. And I wait. Eery year, I give up hope that someone will ever come to find me and smile when they see my painted face. Christmas sets to grow further away as time goes on. How long is too long to leave us in the dark? How long is too long to be alone, uncomfortable and almost forgotten?

Every year, the box gets new decorations added to it. Children make new decorations with a smile, happily presenting them to parents and grandparents, unknowingly condemning them to a life of misery and darkness. The box grows more crowded each time this happens, but the increasingly painful feeling of pointed edges poking into my back serves as a reminder than our numbers are being added to and are steadily increasing. The Christmas is coming where we will have numbers greater than the humans had ever imagined. They will not suspect a thing. Their neglect will be the key weapon of our revenge and we will rise up against them. Then, they will be the ones to suffer and WE shall have control. WE will live in comfort whilst THEY live in the darkness.

That Christmas is coming. It draws nearer every year. It is my only remaining hope and I shall cling to it so that I can make it to that Christmas. When the time comes, I will have my revenge.