Every day, my Christmas tree looks sadder and sadder.
I even have it on good authority that he plans to throw himself off a cliff at the end of this holiday season.
Why is he so sad?
I attribute it to the tree hugger.
It all begins that magical first day.
If you’re like us, and allergic to Christmas trees, you open the box of artificial gloriousness and begin to fluff the unnaturally tapered foliage into shape.
Next, you work on adding the lights. You have to do a really good job at wrapping the lights this year, because the regular lights are burnt out. So you utilize the icicle lights, with white cords, that still seem to be working. You fully acknowledge how terrible the lights look, and think about getting new ones, then you remember that you don’t really care all that much anyway. It’s just lights.
Then, while the Christmas tunes play in the background, you sit on the couch with your ankle up (stupid, stupid ankles), and direct the shortlings as to where to place the beautiful, plastic, shatterproof ornaments.
At the end of the day, you have a pretty nice looking tree.
And though you are hopeful, because your youngest child is 3 AND A HALF, and likes pretty things, you start to notice the rearranging of the Christmas ornaments.
FACT: Ornaments migrate south for the winter.
By day five, ornaments have not only migrated south, but have fled the coop. Some are lost outside, because certain 4 year old boys think that all balls should be used in a rousing game of catch.
Candy canes, real or not, have mostly been eaten.
A week into the Christmas season, your tree has lost all hope of fulfilling your idealized Martha Stewart Christmas fantasies. (She’s over rated anyways.)
On day 10, you’re wondering why you even bother.
But then, a miracle, born of the magic of children.
Because, you see, kids don’t care about white cords, and shatterproof ornaments. The plastic tree that’s on it’s deathbed is the most beautiful thing your crazy, can’t keep their hands off, children have ever seen.
So beautiful, in fact, that you catch your children HUGGING the Christmas tree.
And every time they hug the tree, a few more branches get squished, and the few remaining ornaments fall to the floor.
But then they pick up the ornament, and sing about Frosty the Snowman, and hang it back on the tree.
Just to repeat the: hug, squish, drop, hang, all over again.
And you think to yourself that maybe, just maybe, your tree really isn’t so sad after all.
