O'Christmas Tree

White Trash Rising is selling well on Amazon! Thank you to everyone! If you like it, please write a review. If you don't like it, please message me and let me know. I appreciate feedback!

I am watching my daughter and my husband put up the Christmas tree this evening. Observing my two Italians working cooperatively is entertaining. It looks like the death knell for the tree this year, I am hearing predictions for a new tree next year. I am in my comfort zone; the familiar holiday traditions are in place.

Living a thousand miles from where I grew up, what the old-timers would call “the homeplace,” creates a twilight zone level of denial. It is always warmer in Nevada than in Minnesota; the holidays come and go without frost or snow. Time has no markers. When I think of friends and family, they are unchanged from 1996. Dad and Mom still exist somewhere, back in a mythical Minnesota untouched by time.

Sometimes I dream of Mom or Dad, usually Mom, and the dream is so vivid that when I wake and pause in that moment between dream and reality, I am confused. Jewish belief holds that dreams can serve as a bridge between the living and the deceased, offering comfort and wisdom. That would surprise the hell out of Mom, who was not Jewish. However, I can see her borrowing someone's bridge.

Christmas always brings back the strongest memories. I think it is because Christmas was associated with presents. Birthdays didn’t rank presents; awards or achievements didn’t rank presents. But regardless of deeds, a Christmas present was guaranteed. The three of us siblings, not believing in Santa Claus, were relieved of the burden of the naughty-or-nice list. We knew we were on the naughty list, but our parents were obligated to get us presents anyway.

Dad told us how, when he was a kid, he had small metal candle holders that clipped onto the tree branches and were lit in the evenings. We even had a few of those remaining in our box of ragtag assorted ornaments. Mom forbade us from using them, saying,

“That tree is drier than a popcorn fart, it will go up like a bomb! And you,” she would say pointedly to Dad, “don’t need to be giving them any more ideas.”

Dad was a Christmas enthusiast. The tree was drier than a “popcorn fart” because he chopped it down the day after Thanksgiving. With no apparent reasoning, it was always Dad who picked out the tree and dragged it into the house.

“I think he felt sorry for them, that's why he always got the worst tree,” Donna tells me.

If that’s the case, Dad had a soft heart for the severely affected trees in the forest. Our Christmas tree could only be considered the forest's reject. Perhaps Dad was using forestry techniques to prevent crossbreeding between the sadly genetically afflicted trees and the beautiful, full, and straight trees he ignored?

It was a given that the tree would lean. Nailed to a board horizontally on the bottom as a stand, it was only a question of which direction our tree would settle. The trunk was always afflicted with what could only be described as tree scoliosis. There would be a profound change in direction somewhere in the middle of the trunk, then continuing off at a divergent angle.

Once Dad nailed the tree stump to a board, his job was done. He would settle in his chair, watching the circus unfold. Tubby was recruited to help hold the tree upright, and Donna to string the massive amount of twine from the staple in the wall on one side to the other. Mom would stand back and yell out directions.

“Tubby, more to your left. Donna, wrap that twine around a couple more times, no above the bump there, otherwise it's gonna lean. Tubby, do you even know what straight means? Pooch, you’re not helping. Get the hell out of the way before you get hurt.”

Those were the harmonious sounds of Christmas in our home. Once the tree was upright and secured by twine to the walls, a board, and a few profanities, Mom would announce,

                “Well, it looks like shit, but that’s the best it's gonna be. Make sure to cover up the missing branches with decorations.”

The uneven branches and patches of bare trunk were decorated with clustered ornaments. A leaning star was placed atop, and the finishing touch was added. Pounds of tinsel, saved year after year and supplemented by a box of new tinsel each year, were used.

Looking at our Christmas tree in all its glory, Dad would invariably announce, “Yup, Pooch’s cat is gonna be shitting tinsel all month.”

Once the tree was up, the presents would be wrapped appearing under the tree on the next morning. The wrapping was familiar; the older the wrapping, the smaller the present it could cover, until finally it was unsalvageable. Mom would uncrunch the reused bows and ribbons and slap them on each present.

“It’s not a Christmas present without a bow.”

After milking, we would turn on the lights. Everyone held their breath each night, hoping that the tree would light up. If just one bulb had burnt out, the entire string would be dead.

“Tubby, check the lights.” Dad would bellow.

Poor Tubby, all things mechanical and electrical were his assigned duty. One by one, he would replace the worn-out bulbs to see if the string would light. The replacement bulbs were as ancient as the string of lights and just as likely to be burnt out. But once the lights were on, red, blue, and green reflecting in the tinsel, the tree was a glory to behold.

The anticipation of Christmas Eve was physically painful for me. I begged and begged each year.

“Just one present, can I open just one present now?”

“No.”

This debate was repeated from the day after Thanksgiving to the day before Christmas Eve. As Christmas Eve approached, we could hear the needles fall from the dry tree and land on the presents. I would brush off the dry needles from the presents and greedily look for my name, counting my loot, hoping against hope that somehow another present would have miraculously appeared.

In that month of endless waiting, the needles would fall from the tree, and the cat would hang off the branches, creating avalanches of tinsel and ornaments.

Mom would threaten every year, “Next year I am getting an artificial tree.”

One year, the year we never speak of, someone gave us a well-used metal tree with silver needles. It had once been attractive, a model of beauty in the 70's. But by the time we got it, the tree could best be described as a tragedy. It came with its own stand and didn’t require twine. It smelled of dust and cardboard boxes, and the remaining branches were flattened out and bent. Mom got her artificial tree.

“That’s the ugliest thing I have ever seen.” Mom announced.

“It just ain’t right.” Dad agreed.

The following year, on the day after Thanksgiving, Dad walked into the woods to find the scrawniest and most pathetic tree he could find. Our Christmas tradition continued.