Oh, Christmas tree
It’s me again. Your fellow time traveler looking back at a moment I wish I could relive if only for a few seconds. Christmas was weird all around this year, and I feel like I cheated my 5-month-old son out of the joy of the season. Luckily, he won’t remember his first Christmas, but his mama will, and it hurts my heart a little that my baby’s first holiday season was overshadowed by a global pandemic. I have a son now. I have a responsibility to make sure he has sweet memories of Christmas with family the way I do.
It’s true what they say that time flies when you’re an adult, but it stands still for kids eagerly anticipating the fun and excitement of the season. I know it’s all a part of growing up, but it’s sad to realize I won’t have a chance to soak in moments I once did as a child. I was telling my husband the other day that one of my fondest holiday memories takes me to a wooded pasture beside our single wide where I stomped through brush and tall grass to pick out a cedar tree that my dad would cut down with his Stihl chainsaw. He would buzz off about two inches of the cedar’s stump, use a black sharpie to write “Christmas” and the year on it and then give it to me as a keepsake. He said to “hang on to it and that way, you can smell Christmas all year long.” I think I still have one or two of those stumps somewhere in a drawer at my parents’ house.
Once the cedar tree was placed in a stand and set up in a corner of our living room, the decorating commenced with strings of lights, silver strands of tinsel, homemade ornaments and the grand finale of silver tinsel strings tossed randomly all over the tree’s scratchy branches. Late in the evening, I would lay on the couch next to my dad and watch the lights blink off and on … off and on. I would fall asleep to the silent blink of those lights, and I can still remember the warm, calm and peaceful feeling that overwhelmed me on those special nights of the season. Right now, I’d give just about anything for five minutes of that memory. Mom says our trailer was leaky and cold, and I’m sure the tree was pretty ugly as it leaned to the right and shook dry needles into mom’s carpet. But I only remember how cozy I felt and how beautiful that tree looked.
One other Christmas tree that is forever engrained into my memory is the decades-old artificial one that Grandma Cooper pulled from her attic every year. It had definitely seen better days, but once it was adorned with those big, classic colorful light bulbs and some ornaments from the grandchildren, it cast a charming glow through her picture window. Never mind that you could see completely through the tree in several holes where the artificial branches couldn’t reach. From the road, standing at their mailbox after dark, I looked toward their house and saw that tree as it stood in their living room, peering through grandma’s white sheer curtains. In later years when grandma wasn’t able to climb up in the attic anymore to retrieve the tree, we grandkids would take care of that for her and attempt to arrange it exactly as she had in Christmases past. We placed the wooden train of three candle holders that spelled out N-O-E-L on the wooden TV console, tied the Christmas towel of red poinsettias around grandma’s oven door handle and set out her candy dish that she would fill with Chex Mix. Yes, I can see it now. Even as a kid, I knew how old and tired that fake tree appeared, but it just felt right once decorated and anchored by colorful presents of all shapes and sizes. We never replaced it, and I’m sure it was thrown away after grandma and grandpa died, but those old school light bulbs that would burn you if you touched them are still with me.
So, Christmas 2020 came and went, and I’m preparing to take down my own tree. It’s pre-lit and looks gorgeous in our living room with some traditional ball ornaments and a gold star. My baby won’t remember its beauty this year, and as time passes, I’m sure the tree will begin to shed more of its artificial needles and expose some holes. It will start to look a little rough around the edges as it logs some miles up and down the attic stairs and is re-fluffed again and again by my husband. As our son grows, we’ll talk about replacing it with a new one but then decide to revive it, year after year. We’ll make it last as long as we can because he won’t remember how it looked. He’ll only remember how he felt in the memories that were made around it.
