It’s time. For most folks on my street, and probably yours too, it’s past time. Time to put up the Christmas tree.
I’ve tried to encourage everyone to slow down, to perhaps put up the tree the first or second week of December. After all, the 12 days of Christmas – the liturgical season of Christmas – doesn’t even begin until Christmas Day, and extends until January 6, Epiphany.
Fun Fact: My colleague Stephen Kruiser challenges me to leave the tree up until Candlemas (Feb. 2) each year.
But most of the block, like most of America, fell under the spell of Christmas commercials and has decided that Christmas started the day after Thanksgiving. The lights are up, the trees are in the living rooms, and the mad dash to buy presents has begun. Do you have your shopping list finished yet?
Fake or for? Real or “eternal"? That’s the question that leads to family arguments until the woman gets her way, as is just and good. Do you pick out a real tree? According to the National Christmas Tree Association (which I didn’t know existed until today), up to 30 million “real” trees are sold every year. That’s a lot of needles on the floor.
My childhood Christmases were heralded by the annual assembly of our Christmas tree. I can still hear my dad telling the tale of how he bought that tree on sale in 1968 at Kmart for only $15.98. “What a bargain!” he’d say every year.
In my teenage years, when I was harder to live with than usual, I’d beg dad – please, please, can we have a Real TreeTM? I wanted to visit a tree farm, carry the tree home on the top of the car, and then string popcorn and cranberries as a garland. I was cottage-core back before it swept Instagram.
We never got that real tree. Every year I’d resign myself to seeing the boxes come out of the attic. Every year we’d laugh about the tree’s origin story.
On one of my trips home in the '90s, my dad mused out loud: “I think we may replace this tree.” I was the first one to exclaim “NO!” You see, I’d turned out to be a lot like my dad.
Why get rid of a cherished tradition just because it has a little age on it? I’d look at that tree, a little shabbier over the years, and realize that the sloppily painted clay ornaments we kids made in kindergarten looked perfect on it. Who could count how many laughs we had putting that tree up? It always took two people to stretch the lights across the living room and check for any outages, before we could even think about festooning the trees.
I wrote about our family tree for a newspaper in the '90s, calling it “A Tree for All Seasons.” That became part of the family lore. My dad cut the article out, had it matted and framed, and put the framed article under the tree each year.
That article would end any hope I had of a “real tree” that year or any time in the future.
Years later, when my parents downsized to a patio home, Dad asked me if I’d like to have the tree. How could I say no? I wrote about how much I loved that tree, after all. Today it’s my turn to fight with the three strands of lights it takes. Each year it gets harder to “fluff” the branches. But darn it, that 57-year-old tree still looks fantastic.
Which is your favorite? The smell of a freshly cut fir, or a pre-lit modern wonder? (The first year I saw a pre-lit tree I didn't know what it was; I just marveled how my friends had managed to get those lights spaced perfectly.) Whatever your memories, may you have fun putting up that tree this year.
Editor's Note: Even during Advent, the mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie.
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