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Copyright © 2010 Andrea Langworthy
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My husband and I bought a fake Christmas tree. Pre-lit, with tiny clear lights. We’d talked about it for years. Every time he dragged the remains of a Frazer fir through the house and out the sliding glass door opening. After he’d hoisted it over the deck and pulled it up the hill in time for the sanitation company to haul it away. It was a hot topic when I vacuumed millions of fallen needles from the carpet. By the time each new holiday season rolled around, though, we’d forgotten the hassles. Until this year.
We searched for the perfect tree with the perfect price tag. Sticker shock isn’t just for automobiles, we learned. Our budget rose as we shopped. “That one,” we finally said. I worried needlessly about fitting the nine-foot tree in our car. The waist-high carton slid easily in our mid-sized Malibu. How many pieces are there? I wondered. “We’ll see,” my husband said.
By the time we put sections A through E together, the tree was much bigger than it had looked in the store. “We have to return it for a smaller one,” I said. “But how will we ever get it back in the box?” My husband said not to decide until each of the branches was pulled apart. Raising my voice to frenzy level, I explained what any sane person could plainly see—it was too big for the room. “Let’s see,” he said. An hour later, when every branch fanned out and each needle was in place, he advised me to sleep on the decision. I did, awaking hourly in a panic.
In the morning, I poked my head into the living room and repeated that the tree was too over-sized for our house. Hubby announced his intention to get on the ladder and start looping the ribbons around the tree. I told him there wouldn’t be enough. He repeated his “let’s see” mantra and unrolled the spools of red and gold trim, suggesting I find the angel for the top. I wailed that the angel was too small to be nine-feet skyward. “Let’s see,” he said. Then he left for work, leaving me alone with a tree that had taken over the whole room and was about to crowd me out of the house.
That night, I said we should remove the garlands and get the tree back to the store. My husband decided to put ornaments on some of the top boughs—to keep the angel company “We’ll need binoculars to see them up there,” I said. He told me to wait and see.
Even though it would be added work to remove them before we returned the tree, when he hurried out the door to work the next day, I decided to hang a few things on lower limbs. Just to prove how silly they would look. Surely, my husband would come to his senses, disassemble the mighty oak and return it to the store. I hung angels a neighbor had given me, and a snowperson from a friend, alongside framed photos of our grandchildren. When it was dark outside, I plugged in the lights and stepped back to look at the gargantuan evergreen.
The bright bulbs made mirrored ornaments from my father twinkle and bells from my mother glimmer. They glowed through brightly-colored glass decorations created by my children. As memories of Christmases past enveloped the room, I called my husband. “It’s safe to come home,” I said. “The tree’s staying. In fact, I might just leave it up all year long.”