As a kid, I used to love going to get the Christmas tree. My parents would trundle my sister and I up in matching coats, scarves, mittens, and boots and caravan with my aunt and uncle and their dysfunctional brood to some remote, windy, hill top farm to cut down our respective Christmas trees. My cousins, sister, and I would run from one tree to the next, each one bigger than the last, proclaiming this tree to be THE TREE. Of course THE TREE was usually 12 feet tall, seven feet across and wouldn’t fit on top of our car, let alone in our house. But that was what Christmas was too us– BIG and a preamble to a month of good food, colorful lights, flying wrapping paper, and loud, happy family gatherings.
As an adult, Christmas is BIG in a totally different way and the family tradition of going out to cut down the tree is just one more thing to do, one more thing to be squeezed into the schedule. So that now on top of working, going to the gym, laundry, and other banal domestic chores and errands, I must add writing Christmas cards, shopping, wrapping, baking, traveling, decorating, all while faking good holiday cheer.
Sitting in the car with my family, on the way to get the Christmas tree this year, anxiously jittering my legs, tabulating a mental list of everything to do, and asking my mom how long did she think this was going to take– I suddenly had a vision of myself trying to crush my own Christmas spirit, like a paper cup at the end of a party that I didn’t really want to attend. It started with wondering more and more about how much of a difference can there be between the Christmas tree farm and the Christmas tree lot? Not much. And it would be so much faster to just pay for a cut tree and screw tradition. But why stop there? Fake trees really are more efficient, but do I really need a tree at all? Wouldn’t it just be easier not to get a tree? Because then I wouldn’t have to worry about decorating the tree and having to take down the tree in January, and oh January– the sweet, gray, cold, peace that is January! If only it was January right now– Agh! Stop it.
And that’s when I realized that for the love of Christmas, to just say screw it. Screw getting home early, beating holiday traffic, hitting the gym, and eating a sensible dinner. Get used to the idea that it won’t be perfect, it will probably be late, and that despite my best intentions and efforts, I will forget a present, overeat Christmas cookies, and be irritated with my family instead of feeling grateful and then feel guilty because of my lack of gratefulness and the aforementioned Christmas cookies. Getting a Christmas tree reminds me that Christmas doesn’t have to be perfect, organized, or efficient. I know mine won’t, but at least at the end of the day, I will have a tall, bedecked and twinkling Christmas tree to show for it; a monument to my love of Christmas.
