This is my Christmas tree for 2019. It’s the second year in a row that I’ve gone with a table top tree. Not quite a Charlie Brown tree…its branches are full and it’s a verdant green. But small nonetheless. It seems to fit my lifestyle and remember I am a Buddhist. Buddhists usually don’t celebrate Christmas, but…I do like me some presents!
After I spent a long 5 minutes decorating my tree (note the Beatles ornaments and yes, I am #1 Grandpa!), I began to reminisce about Christmas trees past.
When I was a child, I remember going with my dad to get a tree. My mom never came along. This was the days before cut your own tree farms. My dad and I would drive to a tiny Shell station on North Walnut Street and get a tree from a small collection of cut trees. To me it was always perfect. It was fun to decorate. I can remember having lights that were tubes of bubbling liquid. I can remember us having a giant dark blue Christmas ball. It was the size of a grapefruit ( the size of grapefruits in the ’60s, not those orange sized yellow balls of today). It had to be hung on the lowest branch because it was so heavy. It was, I was told, passed down through generations. I wonder where it might be today.
In my junior high days, artificial trees became popular. We actually had an all silver tree and, of course, the rotating color wheel to go along with it. It was green, then blue, then red, then yellow, then green again. Fascinating….for about three minutes! My mom loved that tree. I think she really appreciated the lack of muss and fuss.
When I was an adult, with kids of my own, we usually opted for hiking through a tree farm and cutting a tree down with the farm provided saw. It’s funny how it always was bigger when you got it home than it looked in the field. Optical illusion I guess.
So the fact that I am down to a table top tree does not mean that I am some kind of Grinch. Emma is seventeen now and she spends less time here and more time with her friends. She doesn’t care about the small tree nor the lack of a big one. She did help me put other decorations throughout my place. There is a plump, gingerbread woman in my bathroom! It makes me feel a little bashful when I pee!
Enjoy your tree, whatever size it is. Enjoy your tree whether it is real or fake. Enjoy your tree if it sits on the floor or up on a table. Remember, the tree is only a symbol of Christmas love. Make sure that your Christmas love is huge and real and is big enough to fill the whole world!
A Semi-retired Kind of Life 