Dead trees What is it about Christmas trees? No matter how cranky I become about the holidays or family or religion or consumerism I find it very hard to be angry with the idea and concept of the Christmas tree.
It is ingrained.
Never
In the twelve or whatever years we have lived in the Big Stink, we have never had a Christmas tree. It’s by choice. We have a small apartment. We spend a lot of time during the holidays being out of town or if we are in town we are running around shopping or wearing holiday sweaters to holiday parties.
We don’t get a tree because it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Yet, I will whine a few times about this fact during the holidays and Mrs. Robot, being the more logical and sober partner, reminds me of all of the reasons it makes sense to not get one.
Still, a little part of me pouts.
Childhood Trees
My best pal George lived in a house with 50 million foot tall ceilings in the living room. This meant that they had to buy a tree that could fill it up – and they did. Maybe I was smaller back then (yes), but these trees were monsters. We could hide under the trees. Build little houses. Meet tree girls. Marry them. Have tree babies. Build tree highways to drive our tree cars to our branch offices.
Huge.
My other childhood pal, Scott, had a similar high-ceilinged living room and a tall-ish tree. Since 1960-something, his parents and mine (plus another couple) have had a big Christmas Eve dinner. Big roast beef. Yorkshire pudding. Gravy. There were other dishes, but those were the big three.
Our childhood home (which is currently surrounded by mud as my parents are having the foundation worked on) had a normal height ceiling so we had to get normal height trees. We had cool ornaments such as the Christmas frog and posterboard+sparkles Santa that my brother made (age 6). There were a bunch of ‘international’ ornaments that someone had been sending my parents during their world travels.
Every Christmas, at least when we were still pups, Mom would gather us under the tree and read the Night Before Christmas book.
Good stuff.
Once our dog tried to pee on the tree.
Last night
So, here are in 2009. Last night I go out to dinner with some dear pals – sans wife. It’s was a fine evening (although kind of emotionally (?) draining as everyone seemed to be announcing all these life changing events).
I arrive home and the apartment is dark. Except for the little Christmas tree in the corner.
What is it about Christmas trees? No matter how cranky I become about the holidays or family or religion or consumerism I find it very hard to be angry with the idea and concept of the Christmas tree.
