Like
so many things in life, I never imagined I’d not have a Christmas tree in my
house.
2012
was a very challenging year for me on many levels. Among so many other things going on, I felt
overwhelmed by the notion of dragging out the Christmas decorations, trying to
decide between tree options (live that could be replanted, live that was giving
its life for our amusement, and fake), and decorating the tree.
You
need to understand, too, that my kids are very creative and every year,
decorating the Christmas tree is NOTHING like in the movies. At our house, it turns into a constant,
fluid, flowing set of skits, rifts, impromptu roasts, and sometimes-hysterical
chaos. So yeah, I wasn’t up for it in
2012.
But
at the last minute, two nights before Christmas eve, I was enveloped by a sense
of nostalgia and guilt. How many times
did my parents not feel like “doing Christmas?” I wondered. So in the freezing cold we drove to the place
we always got our trees and in the howling wind, I pointed to a pathetic foot-tall
thing and insisted we get it into the trunk.
The kids protested. I overrode
them.
We
got the poor relative of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree into the living room
and I hand-selected the few ornaments that were so special that it wouldn’t be
Christmas without them. Then we
attempted to decorate the little bastard.
“Ow!”
“Ouch!
Damn it.”
“Son
of a bitch!”
“I
told you this tree would suck!”
“What
the hell?”
Apparently,
the tree was part cactus. We were
literally bleeding all over it trying to put the ornaments on.
We
laughed so hard we were now crying on the Cactus-mas tree.
Game
over.
We
left the ornaments on that we managed to airlift and drop onto the sickly
branches and called it quits.
Then,
in 2013, we were in our new home. We
went to the Christmas tree farm and picked out a beauty. A cut tree, 8’ tall. Picked it out in 3 minutes flat. It was perfect. It was placed neatly in “the perfect spot” in
our living room and remained up for several days after Christmas. It was so pretty.
And
then came 2014. It has been a crazy,
roller coaster year. Mostly good, but
not all good, and certainly even the good was not streamlined. It’s been a year of learning, let’s leave it
at that. Translation: it’s been an
exhausting year.
So
I asked the kids (who are 19 and 22), do you care if we don’t have a tree this
year? I mean, I’ll get a little tree in
a plant stand so there’s “a tree” but do you care? I texted this question so they replied in
kind. “No, we don’t care.”
Except
they did care. So on December 19th,
they both said they thought it over and really wanted there to be a tree here.
But
you have a tree at your dad’s house, isn’t’ that enough?
No,
we need a place to put all the presents, and we need it to be under a tree.
“Do
you care if it’s real or fake?”
“No,
but it can’t be that 12” thing you tried to pawn off on us in 2013. It has to be tree height, not a pseudo bush.”
Marc
volunteered to go to the storage unit where he was convinced we had a fake
tree. He returned with a big plastic box
marked “Fielding Christmas” but there was no tree. “Hon, I think we sold it at the garage sale,”
he offered. I told him I thought he was
right.
“Can
you just go to the store and pick up a small, table-top, fake tree,” I asked
him.
“Sure,
I’ll do that,” he said.
So
on Sunday, December 21, I woke up and emptied out the plastic box of its
Christmas decorations, placing them just in the kitchen, dining room, and
living room, sparing the rest of the house.
I was pleasantly surprised that Marc had brought my two favorite
decorations: the 3 wise men and a
ceramic reindeer. The two things that I
would feel badly about not having up at the holidays, despite my apathy.
And
strangely, the Christmas spirit started to take root.
I
worked for a few hours in my studio and when I came down, I noticed Marc had
bought the two remaining grab bag gifts we needed for my brother’s house. I thanked him, and then he said, “Did you see
the tree?” I’d completely forgotten that
I’d asked him to pick it up. I figured
it would be in a box for me to inspect.
Nope. He’d put the little tree up
on the living room table in the same bay window where the massive tree had
stood the year before. He’d decorated it
and put a pretty tree blanket beneath it, covering the tabletop. I was so strangely gleeful. I said, oh, you decorated it too. Thanks for putting the decorations in the bag
on the tree too.
He
looked perplexed.
You
know, the ornaments in the bag in the plastic box.
Still
he looked puzzled.
Then
I looked more closely. The ornaments were just simple silver balls. So I thanked him and went to the plastic box
and pulled out the ornaments in a small gift bag. Just a fraction of the many ornaments we’d
collected over the years. And here’s the
Christmas miracle part…the ornaments that he’d put in the bag were my very
favorite ornaments: the bumble bee, the wire
heart, the rose heart, the ornaments with the kids’ names on them, and probably
my favorite, a dough wreath with a photo of my favorite pet ever, Addison, the
boxer I had when I was first married.
That ornament was a gift from two of my colleagues at work. It was the one thing, besides the reindeer
and the wise men, that I was feeling badly about not having in the house for
Christmas. And now, there it was on the
tiny tree in the window.
I’m
reading a lot about being and staying balanced, and trying very hard (seems
oxymoronic) to balance my chakras, particularly the first and second ones. At Christmas time, I was feeling stressed and
trying to calm myself by taking things one step at a time and trying to choose
wisely between what had to get done and what I could live without.
How
grateful I am that the man who means the world to me knew me better than I knew
myself. That in simply simplifying the
madness of the holiday season down to a few decorations, a tiny tree, and a
handful of ornaments, I could reclaim my vitality and a sense of joyfulness in
the world around me.
I
now understand what my grandmother knew all those years ago: the longer you live, the less you need to
rekindle the Christmas spirit. You just
need a few special sparks.
