Regional
(2008-12-22)
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FT. COLLINS, CO
(KUNC) -
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For some families, posing for an annual photograph in front of the Christmas tree is a tradition. KUNC commentator Laura Bridgewater shares why her family keeps their tree under wraps and the camera in its case.
When it comes to trimming the Christmas tree, mix my ornaments and my husband's with ones that reflect our children's tastes and we begin to look like a bunch of fruitcakes. There's the kidney bean Girl Scout wreath I made in 1973 that hangs next to my husband's electric Darth Vader that wishes "May the force be with you." There's the Mardi Gras beads from a college football championship game and the kissing moose that say, "Our first Christmoose together." Then there's the bevy of mermaids and fairies; a wooden cat with its tail chewed like a No. 2 pencil; and a pink flamingo that looks as if it has the bird flu.
Decorating this way isn't easy. At Team Bridgwater, the adults string the lights and the kids "strategically" place the ornaments. When the girls were elf-sized, they hung every ornament next to, on top of, or directly under the ornament that had had most-favored-bauble status mere seconds before.
And the ornaments were all hung on the same sagging branch. No ornaments were ever hung on the back of the tree, no matter how often I suggested it. When the girls finished, I had to bolster the bottom branches with a stack of presents. In child development, this phase is commonly called the "Leaning Tree of Tchotchke."
Jackie Kennedy, who introduced the first themed Christmas tree in the White House with ornaments from the Nutcracker ballet, would be appalled. Not only does our tree not have a theme, it has no style, no color-coordinated ribbons or garlands. We're lucky when the lights work after three trips to the store, seven time outs for parental potty mouth, and unlimited swigs of eggnog.
We tried tinsel once, but the cat ate it. We had a white Christmas that year if you count Buster foaming at the mouth from the laxative the vet gave him.
Speaking of white, the lights on our tree are always colored and they always blink, Vegas-like, but you've probably figured that out by now.
In the other great Christmas debate that between real versus artificial well, we're in the artificial tree camp because of our oldest daughter. She's been a tree-hugger ever since her father and I cut down an overgrown juniper next to the front door a few years back. In the dramatic fashion that only befits a Gabor sister or an overwrought 7-year-old; she prostrated herself at the juniper's roots, watering it with her tears. When we cut it down anyway, she clomped up and down the sidewalk for hours in her red, sling-backed dress-up shoes, waving her misspelled protest sign to our neighbors as they drove by. "Sav our tree! Sav our tree!"
So naturally, our yearly request for a real Christmas tree puts a damper on her holiday cheer. We tell her, "We live in Colorado. Cutting down a tree is as Colorado as blue skies, skiing, and Rocky Mountain oysters! We'll go into the forest! We'll take hot chocolate! It'll be fun!" She doesn't care. We cite the importance of thinning the forest to manage wild fire risks and pine beetle infestations. She still doesn't care. We tell her that real trees are grown on US soil and artificial trees come from well, somewhere else--but she can't think beyond her own front yard. Finally we try, "Fine, we'll buy an organic tree from an organic tree farm where it has free range and has been fed no antibiotics and gets to play with all the other trees." She stoically maintains that all she wants for Christmas is a tree out of a box.
While we removed the juniper against her protestations, it doesn't feel right to ignore her wishes regarding the axing of a living evergreen. That's just asking for bad Christmas karma.
In any event, as each holiday has passed, the tree trimmings have slowly spread out from their elfish eye level. I'll know our kids are ready to leave home when the tree is symmetrically decorated and someone remembered to put a few ornaments in the back. That's the true measure of adulthood. In the meantime, we'll keep the curtains closed.
Ultimately, whether the tree is real or fake, handsomely decorated or not, it's the memories that count--six feet of tacky twinkling in a darkened room, blinking at us from across the years.
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