So three days ago I had two hours to kill.  I guess that's true or I wouldn't have written it, but since then, I haven't had two minutes to myself.  I have five minutes to write this now, because then the spaghetti timer will go off and dinner will be ready.

Oh.  There it is now.  gotta go.

I've been trying to put up my Christmas tree for three days.  Putting it up would be easy enough but I like to light it as I go and I'm particular about lights.  I like my tree stuffed with lights. Lights of all colors, with a string of whites blinking up the trunk of the tree.  I like my lights deep; no strings laid out on the edge of the branches here, thank you.  Lights the length of the branch, tips to trunk.  It's hard, backbreaking work.  I'm not as enthusiastic about it as I was when all my kids were little.  Back in the day, we had two trees; one all white lights and fancy ornaments, the other colored lights and ornaments the kids  or I made.  IT was fun but when we left Montana, I left the second tree behind and have never felt the need for that much tannenbaum again.  When my kids were little, I think I must have imagined that someday they'd grow up and help me decorate.  It never occurred to me that they'd grow up, say "We can't do that!" and then move out of state.  Stupid kids.
I know I don't have to be so compulsive about the lights but once you know how to do something right, it's like you have to do it that way.  Even if it takes a week and makes you ache like you've just plowed the back forty. 

On your hands and knees with a pastry cutter.

Of course, once I get the lights on, I can now turn over the ornamentation to Josie.  She likes to help.  And she's old enough now where I don't have to worry about her breaking all the glass ones.  She only drops one each year, which is much better than I do, actually. 

I've always had an artificial tree, ever since I was about five and my Dad brought home a first generation shiny plastic tree.  He and Mom had been at a cocktail party and when someone lit up (in 1965, EVERYBODY smoked, and they did it EVERYWHERE.  How did anyone survive?), Dad said a spark flew across the room and the Christmas tree exploded into flames.  Two or three of the men (back then, men were big, brave and hearty. Must have been all the smoking) grabbed the flaming shrub and catapulted it through the picture window into a snow drift, extinguishing the bush, removing the danger and officially making it the Party Of The Season.  The next day, Dad bought a tree made out of plastic confetti.

I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.  I was five, I also wanted to wear my bedroom curtains to church.

Dad told the story of the exploding Christmas tree with ghoulish delight every year and we listened with the kind of unrestrained glee usually reserved for catching your sister in the backseat with the neighborhood...oh wait.  It was Margy who wanted to wear the bedroom curtains to church!

Huh.  I wonder why I thought of Margy all of a sudden?

Anyway, I like artificial trees.  I also like fake fur and faux jewels.  As an artist, I have the highest regard for a good fake.  I like live trees, too.  It's dead trees,  decaying  all over my house I don't like.  I can't see the allure of chopping down a perfectly good, live tree, just to use it as a disposable decoration for a few weeks.  It's not an environmental thing; they're trees; we can grow more.  I'm all in favor of chopping 'em down for wood and paper and building fires.  But why go to the trouble and expense when for a pittance you can buy a perfectly good facsimile that will serve the exact same purpose and last for years?

Oh, the piney scent! People say.  Nonsense.  Dead tree smells as good as dead anything else.  The only good reason to have a dead tree is tradition.  If you want one because you always had one, fine.  Be hidebound by tradition.  I do have to admit that last year, as I was tearing two thousand lights off my artificial tree, the idea of simply grabbing the whole thing and shoving it out the front door into a snowbank for the garbage man to haul out of sight was very appealing.  So I guess there's two good reasons to have a piece of garbage as a Christmas decoration. 

My next tree is going to be prelit.

But I will never, ever stoop to store bought Christmas cookies.

So let it be written; so let it be done.

Yule Brenner.  Get it?

 

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