The Ugly, Beautiful Tree

When I was a kid, I didn't understand my friends' Christmas trees at all.

 

First, they all looked like they'd been decorated exclusively by grown-ups.

 

All the decorations were color-coordinated, the lights were all one color (usually white, sometimes blue or red), and there wasn't a scrap of tinsel on em.

 

Like, YAWN.

 

Usually the star didn't even light up, or there was some creepy-looking angel up where the star should be.

 

MY family's tree had personality. Like the way Herb Tarleck had personality.

Gross, dying, freeway-accident personality.

 

First, it was a real tree. I knew this cuz I was there when the family and two or three other families headed down Highway 5 to some random spot, parked on the side of the road and disappeared into the woods.

 

Invariably my folks would pick out a blue spruce. Another family had a two-story-high living room in their DIY log house, so they were Jack Pine fans. My dad never got that. Sure they're tall, but ragged and ass-ugly.

Ugly or not, they make a killing posing as models.

 

That appraisal of the mighty Jack Pine will be funny in a minute.

  

Finding the tree, sawing it down and tying it to the top of the van/car/truck would take upwards of 4 or 5 hours. I honestly can't remember for sure, cuz I was a kid and had no concept of time.

 

We'd get the tree home (and by "we," I mean Dad). Then he'd struggle with the Christmas tree base from a hundred years ago with minimal help from his progeny.

 

We were more interested in tearing through the decorations.

 

That's where it gets ugly.

 

This is as close as I could find to a picture of it.

Doesn't even come close.

 

Over the course of a decade, my folks' Christmas tree decorations collection had gone from a matched set that had been more or less tasteful in the mid-1970s, to a haphazard mass of leftovers that had yet to be broken, two strings of mismatched lights that covered the entire spectrum, and - worst of all - shit their children had made in kindergarten.

 

The tree held it all up like a big gaudy gallows, strewn with enough tinsel to choke a horse. It was like LMFAO had moved into Alistair Crowley's house and redecorated the dead things out front.

Apparently Crowley lived in a house more or less like this one, with dead things in the front yard that would sort of grab at you as you walked by. Kept the neighbors' kids outta the yard anyway.

 

Try to imagine what these two would do to it.

Then imagine that vision as a tree.

 

When it was finished we'd stand back in awe, and eat dinner in the living room, alternately taking in the tree's awful glory and watching either the Grinch or the Charlie Brown thing.

By comparison, we won.

 

A little over a decade ago my folks moved to Ontario, where cutting down trees on Crown land is a bit more complicated. They bought farmed trees for a couple years, then my mom cracked and bought an artificial one.

 

My sister - the family badger for traditions - howled briefly before seeing the reasoning.

 

Mom also bought new decorations. The old ones had mysteriously disappeared during the move.

 

Like, I dunno.

I love the old decorations, and I woulda let you finish, but...

Seriously. I have no idea where they are.

Try LMFAO's house.

 

It wasn't until a couple years ago that I was at my folks place for Christmas and mentioned how nice the tree looked, and my mom said "Yeah... Remember how god-awful our trees used to be?"

Actually, no.

And I didn't notice the notice that I hadn't noticed either.

 

Not until she mentioned it. Our trees really were ass-ugly monstrosities. Not exactly sacrilege or an insult to the Man in Red, but at least an embarrassment to blue spruce trees everywhere.

 

Like burying your grandfather in a clown suit or something.

 

On a separate and totally unrelated note, I more or less understand my friends' trees now.