Several years ago, when my kids were little and still enjoyed going on family outings, I realized it was December 21 and we still didn’t have a Christmas tree! It was one of those years when a family has young kids where everything was crazy busy and all you can think about is getting through the next day. Panic cut into my heart and we were foolish enough to go out into the deep freeze of blowing snow and wind chill to buy a Christmas tree that very evening. The weather made a very unpleasant experience out of something that is supposed to be fun. We drove to a farm that is close by my house and known for its seasonal offerings—the pumpkins and turkeys in fall, flowers in spring, and of course Christmas trees in December.
With the wind chill, the temperature was -19 degrees Celsius and even though it wasn’t actually snowing, it may as well have been. Blowing blustery snowdrift made it impossible to see anything. The kids were miserable in less than a minute. Adrian, my husband, told me to take the kids into the market and we left him with the poor girl who was unlucky enough to be working that day to pick out two trees. About five minutes later, I went out and choose between two trees they selected based on the following criteria: which one was closest to the car? Which one had the least snow on it? Things like symmetry, bare spots, and bushiness—which had always been my requirements in past years—were unimportant as the wind beat sheets of snow against my face. I made my choice and hurried back to the market and felt guilty and sorry as my husband and two employees tied the tree to the car.
When we arrived home, I was shocked to see that the tree I had picked was over ten feet tall. I hadn’t noticed this at the farm. It barely fit through the front door. I hadn’t noticed anything about this tree at the farm. Our home has high ceilings, so at least the height was fine, but this was a monster tree, way bigger than what we have ever had before. I normally like to put the tree in the family room, by the fireplace, but this one is way too big for that. It had to be placed in the living room—and it took up about a quarter of that room. It was more than twice the size of me! I cannot overstate the vastness of this tree. It became clear that the lights we had were going to be inadequate by a long way. So we had to go out and buy new lights.
Everyone who knows me knows that I try to live in an environmentally responsible way whenever possible. I recycle everything. I despise products with unnecessary amounts of packaging. I walk my kids to school most days. Etc. etc., etc. I’m not perfect, but I try. However, I absolutely, positively, hate LED Christmas lights. That was all that was available this particular year. Yes, I know, they use far less energy than traditional lights. I KNOW! I KNOW!! LED lights are…ugly. They don’t produce any real light. They don’t sparkle. I don’t mean twinkle, I mean sparkle. They don’t sparkle like a child’s eyes on Christmas Eve. They don’t have the glittering sparkle of diamond snow when the sun shines after a big fluffy snowfall. They are dead and flat. They remind me of the light in an office building, when one is forced to work late on a Friday night in February. They are the light of a subway tunnel at six am on a meaningless Tuesday. They are soulless. They are a politically correct mockery of the brilliance that Christmas lights should be. There is absolutely no ambience associated with these lights whatsoever. And now there were four hundred of them on my excessively large Christmas tree. I had to make up for it with an unreasonable amount of candlelight.
Now, having said all that, I did quickly realise that I really should shut up. There are people out there, probably closer than I think, who would do anything to have a Christmas tree of any kind in their home, if they even have homes at all. So why am I bitching about the lights? I guess the topic of the Christmas tree is somewhat an issue with me.
After we moved to Toronto when I was a kid, Mum worked at a nursing home and used to volunteer to work Christmas Day every year. She said it was so that the nurses who had young kids at home could be with their families on Christmas morning. Hello? I was only nine when we moved. But of course, now I get it. And none of this was the worst. The worst Christmas was the year I was eleven. Mum had kidney stones and was in the hospital over Christmas and it was postponed for a few days until she recovered. The tree was there but wasn’t really done. I remember my Dad being very clear about the fact that he was not going to be putting up the lights. There would have been a lot of untangling to do, testing of the bulbs, and so on.
Looking back I think he was probably quite worried about his wife and how the hell was he going to get through Christmas with her not being there to do everything. I know I didn’t complain. But I was quite upset about all of it and feeling guilty about being upset about it. I was the youngest person in the family, and the only one who was still a child by many years and nobody else really cared about any of it. My young age was very isolating. But eventually, Mum pulled through the kidney stone drama and we had Christmas. All was well and I was lucky to have a mother at all.
Which leads me to another thing that I’ve never forgotten regarding a Christmas tree happened the year I was sixteen. I had a boyfriend that I’d been dating for a few weeks and he came over one day after school. We had a really great tree that year, big and bushy and all the decorations seemed to hang just right. I do remember one branch in particular…my favourite ornament was on it and we had tinsel on it that was perfectly placed and it fell over the branch like an exquisite icicle of joy. However, the joy was sure knocked right out of me when that boyfriend came over and laughed at this tree. He made fun of it. I was really hurt and mad and confused about that – I really liked this guy and for him to come over to my house and do that caused a massive internal turmoil. Then in the middle of the night I realised, Andrea you idiot, I bet there’s no Christmas tree at all at his house. That should have been obvious to me right away. He didn’t have a normal home life at all, his mother would go missing for days at a time and had serious mental health problems. Divorce and lack of money probably made a Christmas tree a very low priority in his household.
The first year that I was married, I talked in my sleep a lot. Stress or something I suppose. Adrian told me that I asked him repeatedly for a Christmas tree. Why, I don’t know. There was never any question about this, of course we would be having a Christmas tree. When I lived on my own, in my cute little apartment on St George Street in Toronto, I didn’t have a real one. I had a puny fake one that my mother gave me because my place was too small for a normal tree. I loved this tree. It was the cutest little Charlie Browniest tree. The branches were a deep green, and reasonably realistic, and they had a dusting of snowy silver glitter which made it really pretty. There was nothing on it but coloured lights. REAL lights.
I still have that little tree, it sits in the front window of my house in lieu of an outdoor light display. I do that because the year we moved into this house in Unionville, nobody had the energy to put up the lights outside. We had just moved in on November 28 and my mother passed away from cancer a few days later on December 4. Putting that tree there was easy, and it seemed like an appropriate thing to do anyway. I just did it again the next year, and it has been there in the window every year since 2004. I’m never putting LED lights on that little tree. Lucy Van Pelt would be appalled.
The tree was something of an issue for me the year Dad died too, on December 23, 1997. My brother and his wife and I had gone to get a tree for Jean on the 22nd. We put it up, but didn’t have time to help her decorate it. When I arrived at the house the next day, after getting the call that Dad had died, there was nothing on it except my Dad’s favourite ornament – a white and green shiny ball with a glittered green tree on it. Pretty ornament, but very sad. Nothing else was done to the tree and nobody even mentioned it. It wasn’t so surprising that Mum had done that. She hated Christmas since she was a girl. Her own father had died on December 21 when she was fourteen and she never got over it. So for her to be dramatic like that was probably to be expected, just another hit at Christmas for her.
One year, when my daughter, Juliet, was about five years old, the Christmas tree was up probably around December 1. Early for me, but not crazy early. This tree was a monster also, and I had taken the time to find all of Mum’s ornaments and put them up. It was a great tree, lots of glittery old ornaments, you know the kind, made of glass and old glitter, you know the type, the usual old cheruby angels and slightly terrifying Santas. There were a few that were really special though; the most special being a series of iridescent glass bells that fit together like Russian dolls. When you hung it, the bells all fell in order of size, and it was hung with a red ribbon. This one was Mum’s favourite. At some point she had given all her children replicas, but this one had been bought in Germany in 1980 and it was way nicer than the replicas. So, of course, it was hanging front and centre on this tree.
Now, because Juliet had skating on this particular night, we were having dinner early and naturally, we were running a bit late. Juliet, being a delightful little chatterbox, was talking instead of eating. So when she said something about, “the Christmas tree is leaning,” I paid no attention to that.
“Please please stop talking and finish her dinner,” I said to her. “We were going to be late for skating.”
I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you, that less than five minutes later, there was a spectacular crash in the living room. Monster Tree DOWN! It had fallen and landed mostly on the ground, but also across the couch where the kids and cats often sat. Fortunately no one was sitting there during this event.
It was a magnificent mess. Glass, branches and about one million needles were all over the living room. All of my mother’s ornaments were broken, including the German bells, which lay shattered on the couch, reduced to nothing more than a shimmering pile of beautiful glass. There was nothing I could do about any of it at that moment, we really were late for skating and so we had to get our coats on and go.
When we arrived at the arena, Juliet went off to her lesson and I sat on the floor and cried. A woman, who I did not know, and still I don’t, offered to go get me a tea, latte, whatever I wanted. I declined, and she left me alone. I have wished over the years since this happened that I could figure out who she was so I could thank her properly. Friends who heard about this have given me ornaments over the years in a very sweet attempt to replace what was lost. I’m forever grateful for that. My sister even gave me her replica of the German bells later that year, and I cried again. It now hangs front and centre on the tree every year. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, we bought a new, impossibly durable Christmas tree stand.
As I look back on all this. I know that the original gigantic Monster Tree was a huge gift. We have had a massive tree ever since then, and it is wonderful. I discovered that if I squint at it, the lights look almost normal. You can smell it all over the house; when I open the front door to come in the piney scent hits me like a beautiful olfactory bomb. My inner Lucy Van Pelt is uncharacteristically happy and grateful!
