Our family had a plastic tree forever. One Christmas when I was in middle school we bought a real tree and I found it horrifying. I couldn’t stand the idea of watching a majestic tree die in our living room. A beautiful tree that could have lived on for, at least, decades more had we not interfered.
So we had an old musty tree that we would take down from the attic every year. And every year Daddy would stand on the stairs holding the box and gently shake the tree out of the box into my mother’s waiting arms with a big puff of matter flying off into the air. The smell of slightly heat toasted plastic, dust, and fiberglass always remind me of the holidays.
Christmas trees continue to fall into the special place of odd traditions. When you think about it, chopping down a tree, dragging it inside, decorating it with flammable things and candles, sounds like a tradition that should have stopped very soon after the first house was burnt to black ashes. But, it wasn’t. Perhaps people were better at fire safety back then, or perhaps people were appreciative onf the warmth the burning house gave off in the frozen German winters. Regardless, the Tannenbaum is a beautiful and sparkly Christmas tradition.
I have firm beliefs when it comes to trees:
1) Only colored lights. All white lights are depressing unless they twinkle, and even then, eh. .
2) When all your ornaments match in a perfect colored coordinated way, it is just as depressing if not more than having non-twinkle clear lights.
Why?
Well, because this is how the Bradshaw family tree always was decorated.
Hanging ornaments was always like looking through old chests and photo albums. You uncover the glitter covered cardboard ornament you “made” when you were four. Your first grade picture that had been fitted into the old lid of a lace decorated jam jar lid. The ballerina ornament you got when you were twelve that is glued back together from when you threw it at your sister. Christmas ornaments are like a time capsule. You remember and you reminisce and it’s great. Its one of the reason that I never find decorating the tree a chore, and I hate to do it alone. It’s a celebration of all Christmas’s past, and if all the ornaments on your tree match perfectly the décor that you decided this tree then you are missing something that the big box of colorful mismatched ornaments hold. And I feel a bit sorry for you.
So if you find yourself in that situation, go to Michael’s or Target or the local Christmas fair at your church or city square or anywhere, and buy something that will mark this year to you, the year that you started to make your Christmas tree and fascinating storyteller and not just a pretty thing that sits in the corner and catches fire.
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