Oh, Christmas Tree

Do you have your Christmas tree up yet? I don’t know about you, but I hate putting up the Christmas tree. There is always a fight over it. That’s not the right corner. You’re not helping enough.  Don’t put the ornaments on like that, do it like this. Goddammit, the cat won’t stop eating the decorations. Seriously, it’s always something.

But no matter how much I hate putting up the tree, Christmas wouldn’t feel like Christmas without it. Fuck that elf on the shelf; a Christmas tree is what makes the holidays special. Hell, in my house we don’t even have a real tree. We have a better than real tree, with lead coated fake needles that shed just like the real thing to lend an air of authenticity. It’s over nine feet tall and pre-lit, which doesn’t stop my husband from stringing his favorite reproduction bubble lights. They are pretty cool, I have to admit.

I usually find an excuse to avoid decorating the tree. I offer to run errands, to make dinner, to fold the laundry, to massage the cats, anything it takes to get out of tree duty. That’s because when I was a kid, I was traumatized by Christmas trees, or maybe by my mother.

I should explain that my mother was never a big fan of Christmas. Possibly it reminded her that she didn’t have the money to buy everything we wanted. Maybe it was because she was supposed to give, not receive, which meant she couldn’t buy things for herself, things she also didn’t have enough money for.  Or it could have been that we were Jewish and shouldn’t have really been celebrating Christmas anyway. Whatever the reason, she was always more than a bit cray cray between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, and my sisters and I have had to find a way to make peace with the holiday season.

The symbol of my mother’s yearly holiday mental breakdown was the Christmas tree. We never managed to buy one until at most three days before Christmas, when all the good trees were gone. We had a choice of a crappy Douglas fir with a giant bald spot in the front or a Charlie Brown tree, never the nicer trees that were fresher and cost too much money. One year we actually stole a tree from an unattended tree lot, reasoning that by Christmas Eve, they should be giving trees away.  It never occurred to my mother that stealing might not have been the best way to celebrate the holiday season.

We would bring our sad tree home and my oldest sister, who operated as the family handyman, would have the daunting task of securing the tree in the stand. I would fill the basin with water, which I would forget to do the rest of the time it stood as a harbinger for the holiday. Then the fighting would begin, over colored vs. white lights, who got to put the angel on top, whether to break out the tinsel, fake snow, or pine scented air spray, who put the ugly ornaments in front, until the only thing left was lots of crying followed by the gift of silence. The tree would stand neglected for a week or two past the holiday until almost all the needles had fallen off, at which point someone, also not my mother, would put the decorations away and haul the fire hazard to the curb.

One particular year, my sisters and I decided to take control of the tree situation, sort of as a gift to my mother. Before she came home from work, we got the tree in the stand positioned in the corner of the front room. We took out all of the ornaments and lights and decorated the whole thing. My mother walked in as we were cleaning up, the boxes scattered around the room, vacuum standing guard to suck away the many stray needles. The room was perfectly silent; my sisters and I ceased the incessant bickering as we awaited my mother’s reaction.  She looked at us, and the tree, and said, “It’s in the wrong corner.” Then she turned around and walked back out the front door, and didn’t return for a few hours. She was wrong, though, it was in the right corner. She just forgot which corner we had it in the year before. She also forgot we were children, and that holidays were supposed to be for fun memories, not the other kind.

So now I let my family take charge of the tree. I tend to set up the Hanukah stuff, since we have a vast assortment of menorahs, none of which will hold a standard Hanukah candle. I will also carry boxes to and from the attic, hang the stockings, and even remove ornaments from their bubble wrap or tissue paper, but getting the ornaments on the tree is going too far from me. It’s like I’m waiting for my mother to come in and find fault with how I hung something, to complain I am not doing it right, to let me know that yet again I am the cause of her unhappiness.

 Once the tree is up, I sit back and admire it with my family. I love the Christmas tree. I love the fact that we have the oddest assortment of ornaments. I love the fact that my cat tries to eat his favorite ones year after year. I love that I give my daughters ornaments every year so that when they are ready for trees of their own, they will have a set to take with them into adulthood. I’m especially grateful that even if we all fight every time the tree goes up, they still look forward to the tree every Christmas, with its collection of owls, robots, ballerinas, and even snails. It is chock a block with things that each of us loves, and all together, it is a festive version of our family.