Life Lessons From My Christmas Tree
I write here with a personal story of my Christmas tree.
Back when I was first dating, engaged, or married, I honestly can’t remember, my boyfriend/fiance/husband went out on Black Friday with his dad to hunt down a Christmas tree. Back then, in the dark ages before LED lights that do everything but clean your house, this tree was the Cadillac of trees. 7.5’ PRE-LIT, which was a novel concept. Gone were the days of wrestling with the tangled, angry mass of Christmas lights, that never seemed to work eleven months later. The tree then was a whopping $40, marked down from a staggering $150.
Over the years, this tree stacked up memory after memory. Being dragged from house to bigger house in the suburbs to a bigger house in the country, back into the city for holiday parties, this tree has been up and down from the attic more than anything except our luggage. It held up pretty well over the years. A proud, pretend Douglas Fir standing tall in the corner, fanning out into a beautiful conical shape, taking on whatever decoration I was into at the moment. It’s been there with me through the initial “magazine tree” phase of gold and white ornaments arranged with geometrical precision, to the festive classic of red and green with Hallmark ornaments interspersed throughout, and even held steady through the years where I would keep it up and decorate with beads, gators, and crowns through Mardi Gras. It’s been the backbone of my holidays as an adult.
But trees, even fake, do not always age well. In a time of the death of the incandescent bulb, LED lights come off more flashy because well, they literally flash, and twinkle, and sparkle depending on your preference, of course. Newer models have replaced the ancient ways of wires, which now have been cleverly threaded through the trunk, connecting each section with the satisfying sound of a simple snap, when the tree bursts into light. Plugs are going extinct in the artificial tree world. Oh, and the age-old fight over white vs. multi-colored lights, you ask? Banished with a sleek remote, that can change the tree from one to the other without ever leaving the comfort of one’s recliner.
This point brings me back to my now old and dated tree. The new technology and flash wouldn't tempt a better person, but here I am. My jealousy takes root every Christmas in July and Cyber Monday when I see a bevy of stunning trees advertised for prices well above $300 and far beyond. Every November after Thanksgiving, the tree’s inability to keep up with the newest models leads to a fight between my husband and me as the lights that once impressed, have long stopped working. We’ve made it for years by adding strings of lights into the dark patches where the festive glow has died, but finally, all of the lights died this year, and all of our spare lights died too.
We bickered with what to do. Buy more lights that will tangle towards their slow death into darkness or invest in the LED strings over the tree? With a quick bite of a lip and a nervous glance, the question was raised. “Perhaps, we could get a new tree?”
I won’t lie and say I wasn’t tempted again, but ya girl isn’t a quitter. I didn’t get into a relationship with a 7.5’ towering maze of plastic and wire to haul it to the landfill a decade later.
So it was decided. A new tree was out of the question. My patient partner covered the tree in LED lights over the empty shell of the others, scattering a small field’s worth of fake green pine needles on the ground. But it wasn’t right. I went to put on the first ornament only to be met with a tangled net of green wire on top of older wire smothering the tree to death. I couldn’t handle it! I turned to my patient partner and shook my head. It wouldn’t do. Words were exchanged, he threw up his hands and retreated to the sanctuary of the garage, coming back with wire cutters in hand before launching his attack like Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands at the tree in the corner. The cut wires piled up, along with a full vacuum’s worth of more fake pine needles. Like a man crazed after a battle, my husband emerged two hours later, hands yellowed with dye and arms scraped by wires. The deed had been done. My balding, decade-old tree is now free of the dead weight of old cables ready to live on as an encore act with pride and dignity.
Yes, I miss the comforting glow of the incandescent lights.
I look forward to more years of our relationship. I suspect with each year more of those breakable, pricey ornaments will give way to arts and crafts projects made by tiny hands with reckless abandon and abstract creative genius. In that very act of disregarding the beauty standards of others, my tree will transform into the showpiece, it was always meant to be. After all, which do you pay more attention to? A coordinated tree that matches the room around it with perfect, but meaningless ornaments, or one that carries the imperfect weight of a life well-lived?
Like my tree, we can all shed the weight of the last decade and march forward into the future with the knowledge that life isn’t so serious. Making memories and carrying on traditions with our loved ones is really what matters. That, and new technology.
From my tree to yours, happy holidays.
Kathryn
