OH TANNENBAUM

I’m one of those people the condescending call "crafty."

I love to make stuff.
I love for the things around me to feel beautiful.
I love to decorate.

I’ll decorate anything – cakes, rooms, boats, journals, wrapping paper – you name it. And of course, I decorate trees.

Paul and I have had 30 Christmas trees together.

The first one was a 4’ hemlock in a burlap ball that we planned to plant after the holiday.

We strung it with popcorn and cranberries and then hand painted dozens of tiny wooden ornaments to hang from the delicate branches. What we didn’t do was water it.

The poor thing didn’t make it through the season.

Over the next 29 years, there were trees covered in ribbons, dripping in olive branches, and festooned with dried orange rounds.

There was, as Max calls it, "the Great Christmas Tree crash of 2008" when I had to say goodbye to over half of my collection of German glass ornaments.

While each year presented a new pallet for decoration, there was one thing that was always the same...

...every tree, including this year’s, came with a lesson.

I thought I’d share a few of them with you as you’re navigating 2020’s unusual holiday season.

This Week: 4 TREES WORTH REMEMBERING

LESSON 1990: FOLLOWING-THROUGH It’s not just the thought that counts.
Rather than cutting down a tree that first year, Paul and I had wanted to add something to the environment by buying a tree that we’d plant.

Instead, because we neglected the commitment of watering it, we ended up not just killing a tree, but killing one that someone else might have planted.

LESSON 1999: BE CLEAR ON WHAT MATTERS TO YOU.
Although I had put up 9 very different trees by the year my first child was born, they all had something in common.

White lights.

We had just finished Thanksgiving dinner. Paul was snuggled on the couch with the baby and his mother pulled me aside.

She began, "Every year when the kids were small, Paul begged me to use colored lights but I thought they were tacky."

She was choking back the tears when she said, "It’s one of my biggest regrets. Why the hell didn’t I just put colored ones up? He would have been so excited."

LESSON 2008: IT’S JUST STUFF
I’m a collector and I’m hugely sentimental. So, in the Great Christmas Tree Crash, I felt like each broken ornament was a memory lost forever. Not only was that nonsense, but the crash itself is a memory we cherish and laugh about every year.

LESSON 2021: PERSPECTIVE IS EVERYTHING
This year, we're in a new house. In our last town, our tradition was to buy a tree from the local scouts. (It was their big annual fundraiser and the trees were fantastic.) We'd go to the town center, point at the one we wanted, and within the hour, they’d deliver it to the house and pop it right into the stand for us!

Cool. I know.

But this year, we’re in a new place AND it has really high ceilings.

We decided to go out and cut one down.

We found a big wispy one that I thought would be perfect to showcase ornaments.

Remember when the Grinch was trying to shove that tree up the chimney? That was the four of us trying to jam this RIDICULOUSLY wet, heavy, and huge tree through the door.

It didn’t look that big in the field.

So, this year, there was a bonus lesson.

In addition to being reminded that perspective is everything (everything looks different when seen from a new angle - not only Christmas Trees), I was also reminded of the importance in staying in the present moment.

The younger, more hot-headed Paul and over-sensitive Wendy would have been completely in their respective heads throughout such an undertaking – him fuming and me reacting to every under-the-breath curse.

We would have ruined the experience.

Now older and wiser, we played to each other’s strengths, were quick to laugh at ourselves and made a point of enjoying every minute of wrestling that monster through the too small door, into the too small stand, and into the much too small room.

It was glorious.