A Real Christmas Tree

After finishing up our Christmas tree adventure for the year, I felt this article deserved a reprint.  I wrote this a few years ago when the girls were younger, but strangely, even though the girls are older, this still feels appropriate.  Oh, and we found our tree in the pouring rain this year, and I mean pouring.  Our tree still seems to be "over-decorated"-- even with teenaged girls, and my husband still requires a drink or two to handle "lighting issues"... 

I recently read a fascinating article describing how to decorate a Christmas tree.  The article was helpful and full of good ideas, but it discussed things my family just doesn’t put on our tree.  Adornments like fabric, fake birds and carefully tied bows.  I read this article and examined the pictures of the gorgeous trees.  I looked at our tree—no fabric, bows, or fake birds and vowed not to be overcome with tree envy.

For starters, a real Christmas tree needs at least a couple of little children-- better if you have more--putting all of their favorite ornaments on one branch.  It’s best if the branch hangs really low.  So low in fact, that you stare in awe at how the ornaments are not cascading in a slow slither off the branch and onto the floor.  It’s also good to have strings of popcorn and cranberries (also done by the children) looped around branches.  And glittering paper stars, made at preschool, laying wherever they’ve been tucked into the tree by small sticky hands.  We, the grown-ups, are given the top half of the tree, but considering how much work goes into the packing and unpacking of each ornament, and how quickly the season goes with piano recitals, Christmas pageants, school parties, gift buying and cookie baking, my husband and I don’t have the energy to hang more than five of our favorites – maybe ten.  So our tree has this wonderful asymmetry; the bottom half drooping with treasures and the top half relatively bare.

The other element in a real Christmas tree is that there must be strings of lights that don’t work and quietly muttered curses by the designated tree lighter.  In our house, we all implore my husband, the tree lighter, to use more lights.  And here we are in complete agreement with the article I read.  It suggested wrapping each branch in lights for a “lit from within” appearance.  My husband tries very hard at this.  First he tests strands of lights, and find that they don’t work as he has prophesied.  He then makes his annual trip to the hardware store for more lights and begins the lighting process.  There is muttering and cursing from our tree lighter, and clamoring for more lights from the children and myself.  A couple of hours and two stiff drinks later, and the tree and my husband are both well “lit from within”.

Now, according to the article I read, it’s very important to drape and tuck the fabric into the tree.  It sounded like this was a common practice, and it was simply a question of which fabric to use and how best to drape it.  I have never put fabric on our tree.  It looked gorgeous in the pictures.  But I wonder if it belongs on my family’s tree.  For if there is beautiful fabric woven throughout the branches, where would you put the dolls, the fairy wands, the gluey, glittery artwork of the children?  We have only girls in our home, but I imagine a whole host of other things that could be stashed in a tree—toy cars, little animals, and favorite clothing items.  I think you can be really creative in this area.

A real Christmas tree comes with some serious exhaustion for the grown ups, and some serious joy for the children.  And I didn’t see exhaustion in the photographs of the designers—they looked as beautiful as their tree.  And I didn’t see any scratches on their arms from branches, or drinks in their hands from “lighting issues”.  So, I think they must not spend enough time on the Christmas tree process.              

At our house, we still visit a tree farm.  We drive by loads of beautiful, already cut down and ready to go trees, for the prospect of walking through mud, rain or snow, and circling around various “not quite right” trees, until finally we spy the one we all like.  The one we envision in our living room, looking perfect hours (and hours) later.  A proper search takes a good part of a day in itself.

I have many, much wiser friends who have gained some insight into the season.  This knowledge has led them to purchase another sort of Christmas tree altogether.  They have purchased Fake trees.  A completely forbidden concept at our house, but one in which I see a lot of good sense.  One of my girlfriends has a tree that is already lit and decorated.  She has a large storage box for it, and when it is time to put up the tree, she gets out the box and pops it open like a large umbrella.  The layers of fake greenery, lights and ornaments all sort themselves out into a beautiful sight—much like how the tree grows in the Nutcracker Ballet.  The whole process from start to finish takes something like 12 minutes—and that includes the time spent to go to the garage and get the thing.  I can’t say I don’t find that process appealing.

But in our home, we can’t let go of the tradition of a real Christmas tree.  We hunt through the woods (a farm really), we argue about which tree, we have group indecision, we feel the cold, and sometimes the sun, and sometimes the rain or snow.  We arrive at a decision that we all agree on, and then we are all both tired and excited.  We love our tree.  Our girls are as attached as if we were bringing home a puppy.  The decorating process naturally includes some bickering, some “this is my area of the tree” clashes, and so forth.  The branches droop with homemade treasures. The dolls get stashed, as do pictures of the girls when they were babies and toddlers.  My husband truly gets frustrated with the lights and vows to invent lights that work past one season.  We really do have a drink when it’s all finished, and yes it really is to calm and soothe.  And when we turn out the lights and plug in our Christmas tree, it really is a thing of beauty.  Decorations fashioned by the hands of my family in all their imperfect perfection.  This is our real Christmas tree.