O Christmas tree—are you OK?
Every year I take a photo of our decorated Christmas tree. I’m convinced the image will someday spark fond memories of that holiday season.
I now have decades’ worth of Christmas tree photos I can’t tell apart.
But the photo is part of a Christmas tradition, one that starts each year with a trip to the tree farm. There, Mark and I follow a time-honored selection process. I point to a tree, and he says, “Yes, let’s get that 10-footer. I’ll just raise the living room ceiling by two feet, and we’ll be good to go.”
Then he nominates a candidate, and I say, “Good choice. I’ve always wanted a tree with a hole in the branches big enough to throw a cat through.”
We zigzag from tree to tree that way, punctuating the sarcasm with derisive snorts and eye rolls and getting no closer to a compromise. We keep it up until we get so cold we don’t care which tree we end up with.
Not that it really matters; almost all the trees on the farm, provided they fit in the house, are good enough to bring home. But the bickering is a vital part of the tradition.
This year, after insulting each other’s judgment for just 20 minutes—an efficient outing, by our standards—we landed on a mutually acceptable tree. Bonus: When we dragged it out, we were told that because it was unmarked, the price was lower than we expected. What luck!
“The tree was suffering from a previously undiagnosed case of scoliosis. ”
Once we got it home, we launched into part two of “Christmas: The Bickering,” the annual marital tango of setting up the tree in the corner of the living room. I hold the trunk near the top. Mark goes below deck, his groans and gripes emanating from the deepest regions of the tree as he secures its base in the stand.
“Is it straight?” his muffled voice calls up to me, as if I have any idea. I’m standing an arm’s length from the tree, on a slanted old floor, no less. But to make him feel useful, I say something like, “It needs to tilt a little that way.”
“Which way?”
“To the left.”
“What do you mean, ‘to the left’? Which way is left?”
“Toward the wall.”
“Which wall?”
“The back wall.”
“Which wall is that?”
“The back one, the one with the window.”
“They both have windows.”
We could go on like this for hours, and to Mark, it must feel like we do. He tightens and loosens the screws as I lean the tree a few degrees this way or that. At some point I announce, with no evidence, that the tree is plumb.
He works his way out from under it, and we both stand back. The tree is not even close to plumb.
He heads back down to the floor, not for the last time, muttering something about how much he enjoys this part of the holiday.
This year was more challenging than usual. We soon discovered why we had gotten such a good price: The tree was suffering from a previously undiagnosed case of scoliosis. “Straight” meant different things at one foot, five feet and seven feet.
On top of that, we found two egregious bare spots. No positioning of the tree could conceal both at the same time.
After a brief spell of yuletide finger pointing, we did the best we could to hide the voids with lights and ornaments. And we vowed, if anyone said anything, to blame each other.
We didn’t have much time to dwell on our poor choice of tree, however, because a few hours later, it fell over. A couple of screws in the stand were stripped.
Mark left me standing there holding up the tree while he took way too long devising and implementing a secure, if not elegant, support system.
In the crash, lots of ornaments and lights had migrated to one side of the tree. We considered removing them all and starting over. But then we convinced ourselves that the heavy concentration of decorations in that one area helped draw the eye away from the gap on the other side.
I still took the annual tree photo. In it, you can’t miss the Dr. Seuss trunk, the asymmetrical branch placement, the odd clustering of lights and ornaments, or—most glaring of all—the taut lines of kitchen twine strung at eye level between tree and wall on each side.
It looks ridiculous, but that’s OK. For once we have a tree we’ll never forget.
✦ ✦ ✦
(Originally published in the Addison Independent December 2024)
