A ceiling-high
evergreen with its sweet forest scent is among my favorite holiday traditions.
So it’s a pretty big deal that for the first time in almost fifty years, my home
doesn’t boast a “real” Christmas tree.
My attachment
to Christmas trees is a cherished hand-me-down from my dad who died much too
young when I was twelve. Dad had a knack for scanning the tree lot to pick a
tree so full and tall. Even after cutting off a foot or so the trees of my
childhood overtook half of our enclosed front porch.
Trimming on
Christmas Eve was a hallowed occasion, retelling the history of and thoughtfully
placing each ornament—always, always, painstakingly lacing tinsel one strand at
a time.
I loved how
closing the French doors that led from the enclosed porch into the living room
trapped all of that wonderful tree smell inside.
So imagine
my distress the year my mother somehow coaxed my dad to “update” to a tacky, silver
aluminum tree. In spite of Dad’s efforts to cajole her back to reality and my sibs
and me pleading for our real tree, Mom prevailed. Dad reluctantly bought and set
up that make-pretend tree. Mom decked each gaudy stickly-excuse for a branch with
lore-less, uniform royal blue balls. No delicate teapots or ice
cycles or the
rare fluorescent lights from Dad’s childhood. The rotating color wheel beaming
up from the floor to bath the silver imposter in streams of green, orange,
blue, and red, just made it worse.
For months
after that sucker came down, my sibs and I staged a Dad-backed revolt. By the
next year, Mom relented and we had our real tree back, reassigning the silver
imposter to the shuffle board room in the basement.
After my dad
died, the silver tree resurrected for a couple of Christmas’s. By the time I
was a teen, I seized responsibility for buying and putting up the tree. With
the help of my friends, we’d cart a seven-footer the six or eight blocks from
the tree lot to our house and have a tree-trimming part on Christmas Eve.
Even when I
was single and lived in a third floor walk-up apartment, I found a way to have
a real ceiling-high tree.
So why is there
a four foot artificial tree, dubbed a “Charlie Brown tree” by our five year old
nephew, gracing our living room this year?
For years,
my husband Jim has caught a bad “cold” over the holidays. We blamed it on
holiday get-together hugging and kissing. I’ve suspected for years it was
really an evergreen allergy. Afraid admission would put my holiday tree in an endangered species;
I kept my suspicions to myself.
Then last
year, his cold progressed to bronchitis. He hacked his way through a steroid
dose-pack and two antibiotics without improving. Miraculously, he stopped coughing
and sneezing within hours of un-trimming and tossing the tree.
Now, I love
real trees, but I love Jim a lot more.
It turns
out, our four foot artificial tree is plenty big enough to display the delicate teapot
from my Dad’s childhood and the sentimental ornaments Jim and I acquired over
the years. We get ample whiffs of evergreen scent from the wreath on our front
door. I can have the things I love about a tree, and still take care of what I love
the most.
And, isn’t
being reminded what we love most what the holidays are really for?
