Christmas Tree

Growing up in our family was a pleasant experience.

The exception being the cruelties that my brother put me through. Like dressing me in full football gear-pads and helmet-and him and his friends taking turns blowing me up! I thought it was so cool that I got to play with my big brother, looking back I think I got suckered! He got his though; his son looks exactly like me! Who's the sucker now!

During the holiday season I've been reflecting on Christmases past. My younger older sister reminded me of one the other day about the Christmas tree. Throughout my childhood my mother always went through the trouble of decorating the house. Looking back it has become clear to me that she did it for the kids more than herself. Now that we have all grown up the decorations are much more low key...and they match, very little matches when you have kids I think.

Whenever it came time to decorate the tree she would get out the hundreds of ornaments; so many ornaments. When we got done with the tree it looked like over worked mule. A few that still stand out in my memory; disco ball, candy canes made out of beads that I think we might have made in Sunday school (?), teddy bears sitting on blocks with the first letter of our names on them, a spider made from pipe cleaner, and all of the kids "Baby's First Christmas" ornaments.

Tradition had always been that we would take turns putting an ornament on the tree. This had been more difficult during my middle school years due to my two oldest siblings being in college. So the Christmas of my freshman year of High School the tradition changed drastically. We did not take turns putting ornaments on the tree. My mother had always wanted a "pretty" tree like what you see in the magazines. Her wanting that didn't bother me all that much, would have been nice to maybe put one ornament on the tree, but whatever I got over it.

She decided to flock the tree and only put silver and gold ornaments on the tree, meaning no bears on blocks, or spiders made out of pipe cleaner allowed; all of which had become synonymous with Christmas. It all looked very nice, very professional, like it belonged on the glossy pages of a magazine, but it also felt odd. What was tragic was that I had a better chance of touching that Christmas tree in the magazine than the one in the living room of where I lived.

It was only a year before that my sister and I assisted in placing hundreds of ornaments on the tree. Now the tree had become what my mother called a "no no" (or is it "no-no"? Freaking hyphens! When do I use you?) To a small extent it felt like Christmas had almost passed me by that first year of the new tree. In my life it had been a stable occurrence, and there was no warning of a change on the horizon. It just happened one day. Compounding the issue was the rule that under no circumstances was anybody allowed to touch the tree.

10 years later(<--holy crap!) and at 24 years old I still couldn't touch that tree and get away with it. The tree has become an extension of my mother. She can be on the other side of town and if you touched it she would know. You may be thinking that the "no touch" rule is soft, and mainly used as a scare tactic. To those I would challenge you to go to my mother's house and touch her tree. I would bet money that she would be very polite and not mention anything about it but you could sense that something was bothering her. You would never think it was because you touched the tree. I guess it all turned out to be a good lesson because I learned that the only time the Christmas tree belongs to the guy is when it is still connected to the roots.

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One little random slightly weird thing to think about. How much more difficult and complicated would Christmas become if trees pooped? Watering the tree is enough of a hassle, throw in having to clean up its poop and that is a deal breaker for me!