Last year I wrote about our huge christmas tree (http://www.livejournal.com/users/sandratayler/2004/11/27/). Well it’s made it’s annual reappearance in our front room. In prior years I’ve been heartily at work making sure that all the branches get fluffed correctly, making sure the lights are strung evenly, and making sure the beads are draped artisically. Of course doing that meant I spent a lot of time asking kids to stand back and not get in my way so that I could do things “right.” It is an all-day project which ends up with me thoroughly exhausted and usually grumpy.
Last year on Christmas Eve I looked at the tree and realized that the beads I’d strung so artisically had been pulled half off and thrown back on skewampus. The ornaments had all migrated towards the upper half of the tree since Patches kept pulling them off and I kept rehanging them where he couldn’t reach them. And half of the carefully placed lights were out for no discernable reason whatsoever. In short, the tree was a mess, but the kids didn’t care and I discovered that I didn’t much care either. Howard may have cared, but he didn’t mention it to me. In fact the messy tree amused me enough that I made sure to take a picture to record it for posterity.
This year I let the kids do the fluffing of the branches. Branches need fluffing because they get flattened during 11 months of storage. I always carefully fluff each branch so that they curve gently upwards in the way that real trees do. The kids carefully fluff each branch so that it looks like an electrocuted porcupine. But when all the porcupines are put into place and covered with ornaments I’m pretty sure no one will be able to tell they’re porcupines except me. Hopefully. I did control the light stringing because there was electricity involved, so the lights are fairly evenly spaced. Then I handed Kiki & Link the strings of beads and walked out of the room. They felt so grown up and responsible to be hanging the beads all by themselves. When they declared the beads done I came in to look. Had a pot of spaghetti exploded near the tree, it would probably have resembled the arrangment of beads that Link & Kiki achieved. I’m pretty sure that sections of the beads were thrown at the tree. From a distance. But they loved doing it and I didn’t have to. I’ve realized that glowing memories of childhood are much more valuable in the long run than an artistic tree. That is good because a large portion of our christmas ornaments are going to be shrinky-dinked kids drawings of video game characters.
I remember looking at those perfectly decorated trees you can buy, with the ornaments and lights already on them, and thinking “Wow, I didn’t know a Christmas tree could be that pretty. With ornaments that match and everything.”
But really, my idea of a proper Christmas tree is one covered in handmade-by-children ornaments, of construction paper and glitter, or walnut shells and sequins, or clay and glaze. None of them match the others, and they accumulate along with the store-bought ones that various relatives give which also don’t match. See, this is the tree that says “Christmas” to me.
=)
LOL! That’s kind of what we do.. I get to put up the tree (a live one) and check and string the lights… then I have to let everybody else do the fun part.