The House Without a Christmas Tree

Well, I'm bothered.

I am considering not putting up a Christmas tree this year. I know, I know, we already don't do any decorating other than the tree. I mean, other people seem to enjoy putting lights on their houses and stuff, but my family has never been one for that. Actually, any lights that were ever draped over the bushes were done by me, and that includes the bushes from my childhood home. As a matter of fact, I was the person who put up the tree (it was an artificial one, with the metal branch ends color-coded to the holes in the "trunk") each year, and then put the lights and the ornaments (complete with the stupid white doves my mother liked) on it. Mom didn't care about it, Dad didn't care about it, and I don't remember if my brother did. I do remember, however, that I was the one who cared, and I was the one who put the damn thing together. One year I wrapped vinyl red plastic around the porch posts in an effort to decorate the house. I did that. No one else gave a crap. It looked about like you would expect - there is a picture somewhere of my brother and me (and I was wearing my ghastly 6th grade glasses and a windbreaker) sitting on the tiny porch with my feeble attempt at Christmas cheer.

The first year I was married, we did not have a tree. We were too poor to purchase an artificial one, and honestly, we were too poor to buy a real one, too. They were $40, and we didn't have an extra $40. So, the first year our apartment went undecorated. I don't remember caring. I honestly don't remember the second Christmas we were married, either. I do remember the first tree in our first house, but I don't remember if it was before or after our son was born. I know I went to Kmart on Parrish Avenue and bought lights (the tree was real) and the lights were ugly. They were orange and green because those were the cheapest. The ornaments were those simple glass balls. They were cheap, too.

I talked my husband into getting a tree every year after our first child was born; even he could see that it mattered when you had a kid. He became somewhat of a tree connoisseur - which type had soft needles, which ones didn't. My mother swore that vacuuming up the needles burned up vacuums, and the tree salesman convinced my husband that certain prickly needles would poke a hole in a toddler's hand. I have pictures taken every year of our tree with the presents under it. One year I even had a ring on the tree - it was in a gold ornament case,and my husband plucked it from the tree and presented it to me. That must have been a good year for us financially, and I don't remember why or how. I do, however, remember the year he had been injured in a fall from a building and wasn't working. His father gave us a choice of a TV or $300, and we chose the money. That was the only reason we had a Christmas at all.That $300 might as well have been $3,000; that's how important it was to us.

After many years of real trees  I decided to buy an artificial one. It bothered me that I couldn't put a real one up a month before Christmas, because it would dry out so much. Many years we put the tree up two weeks before, and then took it down the week after. That's a lot of work for 3 weeks of enjoyment! So, I eventually bought an artificial tree. My husband insists on storing it assembled in the basement, so someone must carry the thing upstairs every year. Although I hang all the ornaments, I guess carting it upstairs is just too much to ask. I can't do it myself, so I have to depend on him and the kids, and no one is interested. In 2008 I was stressed to the max with school and with no one cooperating with me, and I gave up on the tree. A week before Christmas my husband and my sons put the tree up, but with less than half of the ornaments. It was...ugly.

So, after asking nicely, cajoling, pleading, and begging for three days for someone to bring the tree up, I have decided there will be no tree this year. It ain't worth it. And now I am wondering why it bothers me so much. Is it because I have never lived in a family where the tree is wanted? Is it because I have always been the one to put up the damn tree? All I can think of is that stupid  TV movie from my childhood with Jason Robards as the asshole father who denies Addie her tree. And now I am living in "The House Without a Christmas Tree."

My goal remains: to spend Christmas on the beach. This just makes me more determined to get there.



















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