Oh, Christmas Tree

Well, the Christmas season is off to an interesting start this year! But then again, we’re us, so this is pretty much normal.

We started our day by heading off to cut down the annual “VanDyken Family Christmas Tree.” We like to get a real tree because it’s “green” (no landfill here!), it smells good, and it’s been our tradition for 10 years. So, off we go into the cold winter air with our coats, boots, hats, ..and saw. After 45 minutes of winding through acres of possible winners, we come upon a pretty little spruce tree, all happy and fluffy and ready to stand in our living room as a beacon of peace, joy, hope, and all that represents Christmas. My husband asks me repeatedly, “Is this the tree you want? Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure that you want this tree in our living room for a month?” I answer with a confident “yes!” (Yeesh. Of course. You’d think by the way he asked a hundred times that I’m the kind that changes her mind all the time, or something.)

Anyway, he starts to saw, the tree falls over…..and I see it. And I immediately realize that I have made a horrible mistake. Her undercarriage (for lack of a better word) is all dead, brown and full of leaves. I also notice that she has just shrunk about a foot and a half. I stare at her hoping that it’s just a bad angle. I take in a big breath and Matt looks at me (with the look of a husband that knew this was coming) and says, “What?”
“Nothing”, I say with a forced smile. My perfect, pretty little tree has just turned to a giant crap pile. That’s all.

So we go and wait for the tree people to shake her silly and wrap her in string. As we wait in line I look around at all the families with their *pretty* trees. Perfectly spaced branches, nice stiff needles, straight trunks. I look back at our tree and notice she has now shrunk another foot, her branches are droopy, we’ve left a trail of brown needles in our wake, and…wait…did that lady just smirk??!? Seriously. I’ll cut you. I’m not in the mood, Woman.

The man puts our 3 foot tree in the shaker and I can’t watch…nor can I look away. I feel sick. He puts her in the string machine and ties her up all tight. She looks like a splintered baseball bat. As I watch all these families take their stately, elegant trees away (one person at one end and another person at the other), Matt throws our tree under his arm, bungees it to the hitch hauler on the back of the SUV, and we drive home in silence.

     We get home and I get out of the car and give our baseball bat, I mean “tree”, a dirty look. She lied!!! She pretended to be something she wasn't! I was misled! Disgusted, I went inside to figure out how to rearrange the living room in order to hide our shame.

     Matt hauls her scrawny carcass into the house and gets her all situated in the stand. He has the audacity to smile sweetly at me and say, “There! Perfect!” I’m pretty sure I was bleeding out of my ears. You know what would have been “perfect?” Tree-topper Matt. That’s what would have been perfect. As our tree leans precariously at a 45 degree angle I am ordering my husband to hack off her bottom branches because they’re dragging on the carpet. Omigod, I hate this tree. Because he’s a decent human, he doesn't bat an eye, knowing I’m at “stage: lunatic” (we've been married a long time) and gingerly starts trimming her ridiculous branches. I can’t take it anymore. “I’ll just do it.” He gives me the trimmers and I start angrily lopping off limbs in an attempt to make her behave. I decide to take a deep breath before I completely blow an o-ring. I give Matt his trimmers back and stand back and size her up. Yep! Hate her.

     I went to the basement to get the decorations. Maybe, just maybe, if we put enough crap on her she can somehow redeem herself. I grab the lights, bring them upstairs, pull out a strand and plug them in. Nothing. I stared. I grabbed another strand and plugged those in. Nothing. “Sonofa#@$%^!!!!!!!!!!!” I grabbed my keys and went to buy more lights.

     I came back, tore the lights out of the box and stuffed them into the tree. Her stupid, floppy branches bent under the weight of the strand of lights. I was in full-fledged temper tantrum mode now, folks. Not my proudest moment. It’s around this time that Matt is getting the heck out of there. He left to go hunting. I can’t say I blamed him.

     My son had excused himself to play the Wii. Can’t say I blamed him, either. His mother was acting like an angry honey badger. My daughter, bless her, said to me, “Mommy? When I don’t like a Christmas tree, you know what I do? I pretend it isn't there.” It was then that I snapped out of my demon possession and stepped back into reality. There was no way I was going to ruin Christmas for my family because our tree was a non-conformist. I gave her a hug, went downstairs to get the rest of the ornaments, called Nathan into the living room and we threw every ornament in the house on our heinous tree. And something strange happened. I started to look at our tree differently. I still thought she was an ass but she didn't seem to be ruining Christmas anymore. I actually kind of could tolerate her. And to top her off, we even put our Christmas train around her. Sweet, stupid, droopy, floppy, kind of okay tree.
                                                                   

    Oh! But we’re not done at the VanDyken house yet! Our kids each have a little (artificial) tree that they decorate however they like for their bedrooms. This year, Anna wanted to string popcorn around hers. So we popped some, ate half of it and then I found a blunt-tipped needle and some thread and she got to work. After a few minutes I heard a scream and I came tearing into the living room. “Charlie ate my popcorn!!!!” I look over at the dog, who’s licking his chops and sniffing the carpet for more. That sounds about right. So, I get her more thread and she starts over again and ends up with a lovely little garland for her own little tree. It’s around this time that Nathan informs me that the train is running too slowly and needs new batteries. We need four “C” batteries. We have two. Of course! So we head to Walgreen’s, buy batteries and come back home. To make a long story short, I’m in Anna’s room later and notice that her little tree is on the floor…and the popcorn is missing. “Charlie!!??! Did you eat the popcorn???” He answered by making his face about 4 times longer than normal (if you own a dog, you know exactly the look I’m talking about.) I panicked a little when I realized that he not only ate the popcorn but the thread that held it together and the beads we put on each end to keep the popcorn in place. That’s great, Charlie. Just to let you know, you’re in for a rough day tomorrow, Buddy.*

                                                                           

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season. Hopefully, my embarrassing temper tantrum was enough to remind you to “not sweat the small stuff” and to enjoy every blessing that is thrown your way.

*Disclaimer:

Charlie is a Labrador Retriever. Intestines of steel. We love this dog as if he were a person. He is a member of our family. We will make sure he’s well taken care of.