Our Christmas Trees, Past and Present
I am back in my little condo in the country preparing for Christmas. Before leaving the city I decorated our 4 foot artificial Christmas tree that we bought when our 3 year old granddaughter was coming to spend Christmas with us and we wanted a tree for her. I will spend another week here before returning to the city to spend Christmas with our daughter and her children and, of course, our artificial tree. The tree that sits on the table in my living room here is made of ceramic. Our daughter, who took a ceramic and pottery course several years ago, made it for us. It is decorative, bright and cheerful, with its little birds and coloured lights. After Christmas I will store it in the city until next year when it will replace the artificial one that I plan to set outside on the balcony. Christmas trees past . . . The last year we spent together with the family – before moving to another city, one of the boys, my husband or all of them, brought home a tree that was to become a disaster. The tree was in the shape of an S, it did not stand straight and it was next to impossible to decorate – it was so ugly that even the cat attacked it! It fell over and several of the ornaments were broken. After cleaning up the mess we cut it back – hoping to make it look better. Unfortunately, that didn’t help - - the S shape was more obvious than ever. We tried in vain to straighten it, and cut it back until it was so small the only place to put it was on a table! I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry! None of us forgot that Christmas - it was hilarious! When we moved to the new house we chose to not buy a tree. Instead, we decorated a plant that had been left by the previous owner. The house had floor to ceiling windows which was great for tall plants. This not-a-tree turned out to be a worse experience than the cut- back tree that sat on a table. The following year we chose to have no tree at all. There were worse Christmases: One year we all had the flu and everyone stayed in bed; on our sabbatical year in France, Christmas found me recovering from surgery, and there were barely any presents for the children and definitely no tree – it was a sad Christmas for us that year. Fast forward to the time I lived in the country . . . and we decided to pick a tree off our own property. None of the trees were very nice, but they were ours and it was an interesting experiment. Even my little dog Mimi hopped and jumped with delight as she got caught up in the excitement of us chopping down a tree and dragging it back to the house. We did this in November and the tree was left outside until mid December. It remained fresh and never dropped a needle; it also gave off a marvellous scent of pine. It was not a beautiful tree – its branches were sparse and bent, but it was ours and we were proud of what we had done. We kept it in the house well into January, and then put it outside where we could look at it. Finally, one day in the spring, we told it goodbye, chopped it into little pieces and put it in the garden. Christmas and trees and all of that are now more or less left up to our children. We love to be with them to enjoy their trees and decorations, and, of course, all the presents. My daughter, after saying she had ‘caved’ and was going to buy an artificial tree, found she could not bring herself to do it, and is buying a real one instead. On the news today they said it is better for the environment to cut trees, after all – she will be happy to hear this. We have had happy trees and sad trees, good Christmases and bad Christmases; I look forward to enjoying more trees, be they real, artificial or ceramic – in the end, the only thing that really matters, is being with our loved ones, if possible, at this time of year.
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