Tree up, towards the middling skies above, and I’m thinking heaven past that! Tree down, mom takes a breath, at least these days. … Christmas is not about gift-getting, (you don’t have to wrap a tree, at least not in the formal sense), or gift-giving, (you only need one tree, really, but oodles of gifts), rather it’s all about decorating, and maybe they’ll do it for you if you give them the keys to the closet. But we flat-out need a tree. And it better be a balsam, Mr. Grinch.
To tree or not to tree? I know what my brother thinks. And my mom. I’m somewhere between …
It never used to be Christmas without one. When in college, early years in the work force, and later once the hours required waned and the vacation time had been built up, it was always home for the holidays and at the centerpiece of each celebration was – a usually massive tree. At the house where I reside the other 51.5 or so weeks of the year, sometimes one was put up sometimes not, with the coin flip usually going against in the last decade or two. At the same time, in the last few years my mom has either also opted in that direction, since it was a lot of work for her, but less when the grandchildren took over the task. The youngest had long ago taken over the role of chief decorator, and he knew just where each and every ornament had to go! I have never taken the time during the busy present unwrapping event to ask him if he had a favorite.
—When leaving a downtown bar, I noticed someone had placed a big candy cane-shaped decoration into the thick snow. No wait a minute, until I got closer and looked closer, it was actually a dead plant sized like a cat-tail but partially bent over. Think I gotta get off the sauce … The best decked out vehicle though, even beside the decorated trucks we see, is the Hudson-based bus company that has one of its fleet set out by the street, showing strings of colored lights bulbing out in all the right places – you know, along the narrow-crack door edges that run up and down and across. One of our fine grill and bars closes at 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve, but lets you known with the same small sign on its door that last call is not until 3:30 p.m. An earlier day, but not by much, that snow plow, or was it another implement, on an icy city street during a snowstorm sure was hauling ass. And not to a now-its-melting manger. On the other end of things, that street de-icing machine built the size of the lawnmower, and booking it down a main road, really wasn’t going fast enough to not block traffic. —
But this year, the Christmas tree at my brother’s house, always outranking the reaching-toward-the-heavens cathedral ceiling for importance, underscored a lack that pro-typical balsam fir at my mom’s condo. I wrapped a last present and turned my torso to place it under a tree that was not there. But I still remain OK with the idea of staring only into the figurative eyes and heart of that figure – the tree at the brother’s home, for decades, that lunges more than a dozen feet in the air nearly at the exact point of a pair of skylights.
The traditional bulbs are always the best, orbs with colored foil that caved in, with more folds, at just the right places of the circle with a spire, some going back to when I was a very small child and at grandma’s house, too. All the trees, no matter at whose house, had a style of shape that was widest at the very bottom, but had somewhat straggly branches that could be snipped or culled completely, leaving room for presents. Although the biggest boxes had to be housed until Christmas alongside, or maybe even in back of the tree, if that’s where the lower branches were slimmest. Good thing we gave that tree a last twist, when setting it up, so it turns out that there were practicality and not just beauty reasons.
Back to mom. She still put up some of the standard, as in being around multi-generationally and as such obligatorily, decor stuff on all the cabinet and end-table tops, to no end, or this time there was one. The nativity was still there, and next to it a tiny makeshift pine tree I once bought mom for Christmas, although both were missing most of their small stones on the roof, or sparkly thingees attached to the end of branches, respectably and respectfully. By the front door, there were the two wooden and painted planks, made when mom did a holiday bold paint job on them with her grand-daughters at a class for doing such, at a local business that specializes in doing such. (I on my end did an advertorial for Cheers Pablo on such things and they stiffed me. So naughty or nice, and coal in their stocking, and I think that is part of what is handcrafted.) But Christmas cookies were a half-and-half deal as far as volume, and none of that famous (moreso than in most cases, the term applies) cranberry sauce with other fruit add-ins, or punch, spiked or otherwise. I know my sister-in-law will more than make up the difference in a (mid)holiday meal.
I know that back at my first home to call such as an adult, getting the tree just right – in those early years when my wife and I decided to have one – can be a push and pull that can lead to squabbles. As can the process of sweeping and vacuuming and picking up personally needles that drop That First Time Up The Stairs. Every single Grinch-like needle, and don’t dare miss one! And to cut off the bottom base of the trunk – they call it hard wood for a reason — later done out in the garage but varying in location depending on the size of tree, and how it grew in the middle years, then dwindled. The thick screws that gave support to the old-fashioned metal stand, colored red and green with some gray streaks from the scraping, never seemed to go in straight, always angling off to the side. The arms did the same, and are they actually called arms, or did I hear her shout directions wrong when standing just near enough to hold the tree by way of one of its sturdiest branches, but far enough away to be able to see if it was at least sorta straight. Could never seem to get that right, and “right” seems to be a word I’m using a lot here.
How do fix this whole situation? Joe always had a good idea that was bad in practice. There were an endless supply of wrong-size, just barely, widgets and jahoozits and many other words that you can almost spell to serve as splints and small joices, words my dad loved, and there were a few other words coming from me too blue to be printed – I believe that even new Catholics like I were told to go to what they used to call confession, PRIOR to Christmas not after when it’s really needed. They changed the term to make it softer and call it reconciliation? Not cuz of the likes of me! This is why Christmas is only once a year, to keep folks like me from building up (bad) points to ensure us of hell. OK, it wasn’t really that grievous, likely since God took one look at what my tree trimming had done to his once beautiful creation and He got distracted!
What, more tinsel, don’t we have enough hundreds of strings of tinsel on it already, and remember somebody has to take it off after 12 days, and Thank God there are that many days in the holiday, to give me time to decompress/procrastinate. And no, that there really is a bare or bald spot, that’s what’s coming to my head, and there is actually a traffic jam of orbs already, right where you are pointing …
So abrupt ending to end this essay … no more words too, to throw at you.
Happy holidays and Merry Christmas, Joe.