Oh, Christmas Tree
I grew up with “real” Christmas trees, trees that dropped needles and had to be watered and kind of drooped as the season went on and then were dragged to the curb, fake icicles still hanging, looking forlorn and dead until waste management finally picked them up from under the snow that had accumulated on them while they waited. Sometimes I think they weren’t found until the April thaw. (Upstate New York. Canada without the benefits.)
Trees with my first husband were real, too; I think the imitation trees were just starting to come out and looked pretty pathetic — trying to look like trees but looking like wire with green wire wrapped around it. I do remember the smell of a freshly cut tree, though, and the feeling of the outside coming in. The smell came in a can later, but it wasn’t the same.
Trees with my second husband were real trees, always. He was a carpenter at the time, and real wood was sacred to him. He tended to overestimate the height of our ceilings, though, and had to saw a lot of trunk off to allow the tree to not be bent over double. I’d look at the tree he brought home and say, “It’s too tall,” and he’d snap back, “No, it’s not!” And then take it back outside several times to cut more off the trunk. Our trees often didn’t have a star or an angel on the top. There just wasn’t room.
Then I had my first Christmas alone with the kids. I was in charge, and while I was out shopping one day, I found the perfect tree. It came in a box that I could lift, it assembled into a tree that pretty much looked like a tree, right down to the fake snow on the ends of the branches. I loved it. I don’t remember my daughter’s opinion, at least that first Christmas, but my son hated that tree with a vengeance.
The snow did turn kind of yellow after a few years, but it was the tree I had and the tree I put up. We took it with us when we moved to the Catskills for three years, but at my children’s insistence, it stayed there when we moved back upstate. It had seen its last Christmas.
When my daughter stayed in the Catskills for her senior year and it was just my son and me, I gave in to his “request” (it was stronger than that, I think), and we went to a nearby tree lot and got a real, on life support tree. I got down under it to make sure it was in the stand and straight, but I didn’t want to scratch my glasses, so I took them off. I scratched my cornea instead, and that became my pirate Christmas, as the patch didn’t come off my eye for quite a while. Tip: don’t scratch your corneas. It hurts.
When my son left for college, my third husband and I went straight to the “fake” tree store and bought a pre-lit 5-foot tall that almost looked real. I loved it. My husband was indifferent, and my son hated it, but I hadn’t scratched my cornea, because it came with its own stand and just had to be assembled. The lights went on as soon as they were plugged in, and all we had to do was put the decorations on. When the season was over, we denuded the tree, took it apart, and stored it upstairs for the next year. No dead tree blowing around in the snow, blowing into the street while it waited to be picked up. No dead needles stabbing me in the feet six months later. It was wonderful, and that tree lasted for years. When the lights finally gave out, we just bought another one.
When I started spending Christmas in North Carolina with my son, his wife, and their son, I stopped putting up the big tree. I bought a little one, bought some blue crystals to decorate it with, and plugged it in. It solved the problem of the bottom of our trees never having any ornaments, because the cats and dogs thought they were toys. I lost a lot of beautiful glass balls until we tied up the tree, didn’t decorate the bottom half, or I just put the little tiny tree up high on a shelf and left for North Carolina.
These last two years, Dave, my fiance last Christmas, my husband since March, have spent Christmas together. My little tree wasn’t big enough for him; he loves Christmas. He’s not allowed to decorate until after my birthday (December 6 — damn it, my birthday comes first) but he goes all out after that, putting lights on the bushes and around the porch and around windows. It was when we went Christmas tree shopping I knew I’d met the love of my life. I saw the most beautiful six-foot pre-lit imitation tree I’d ever seen, and he liked it, too. It’s white with pastel lights. No other husband would have stood for it, but Dave fell in love with it, too. I think if it had rotated, snowed on itself and played carols, he still would have loved it, as I would have.
There are the purists who think that only trees on life support are acceptable, and then there are those of us who think technology is a wonderful thing and that it’s the symbol of the tree that makes it, not what it’s made of. Jesus was not born under a tree, and if he had been, it wouldn’t have been an evergreen. I’m sure there were people who hated it when electric lights replaced candles on the trees, and maybe my father enjoyed those lights that if one bulb blew, the whole string went out, and he had to try every bulb to find the burned out one. But I embrace the modern and love my plastic tree with its pastel lights built in that can be stored in the garage for the rest of the year under a sheet. To each his own, and to all, a Merry Christmas, whatever tree you celebrate with.
