Decorating the Christmas Tree

I love our Christmas tree every year. I think there's been one year I wasn't super happy about it – it was a live tree with droopy limbs. But, for the most part, I love it, every single year. We've had live trees with bare spots and we sometimes use my Grandmama's fake tree (ever-lasting my Mama would say). I almost always wish our trees were taller. But, once you get the lights and ornaments on, it's beautiful. So beautiful.

Our ornaments are a delightfully quirky mix. There's a sled-full of clay snowmen with our names on them, and a Swarovski crystal star that proclaims the year is 2001. There's one made of cardboard glued to a red, wooden ring hung by red yarn with a picture of 5-year-old Amy in it. There's an elegant shell angel from my friend Lori's wedding and a cowboy boot from Texas. I always finish off the decorations with a tartan garland and pipe cleaner candy canes the boys made one year. I can't remember the last time we used white lights. It's colored lights for us. 

The tree is kind of funky. But, it's ours and I love it.

My problem comes in with the actual decorating of the tree. This year the boys put the tree up while I was out of the house. I thought they did a great job until I finished putting the lights on, which I've done since I was a high-schooler. Once the tree was smothered in lights I gathered the empty boxes to put in the attic when I noticed something funny about the Christmas tree box. It wasn't empty. There was a branch in there! The boys had left a whole branch off the tree. They claim they couldn't find an extra hole for it to go in, but that's never happened before and I know there's not an extra branch. I figured if I hadn't missed it while putting the lights on then no one else would miss it either.

After the lights, we all hang the ornaments together.

I always picture this going differently than it does in real life. I want us to have Christmas music playing gently in the background. There should be hot chocolate cooling in mugs on the coffee table. I want us to laugh and tell stories and reminisce about the ornaments, where they came from and why we got them. I want everyone to be ON BOARD and paying attention.

That doesn't happen in my house.

This year, I was just happy we were all home on the same night so we could hang ornaments together. I had thought we might need to divvy the ornaments into piles and let each person hang them when they were home. I sat on the floor by the tree with the huge plastic box of ornaments and a tangled pile of ornament hooks. I would say things like, “Here Allen, you hang this one. It's the twin bears in mittens that my friend Rosalie gave us right off her tree on your first Christmas.” And, “Bobby, you hang this one. It's a real silver bell!” 

 

They would humor me a little. Each would look at his ornament, smile, say “hmmm,” and find a place to hang the precious bauble. Then, they would refresh themselves, not with their hot chocolate, but with a minute or two of whatever football game happened to be on.

I wanted to huff and sigh. I wanted to say, “Hey, over here. This is all part of celebrating the birth of Jesus! Don't you care?!!”

But, I didn't.

I know they care. I came home one afternoon after the tree decorating to find Davis alone. He had plugged in the Christmas tree, but that's all. No lights in the front window. No lighted garland going up the stairs. No adorable Christmas Minion on the front porch. When I asked him about it he said, “The tree is all that's really necessary for me to feel like it's Christmas. Well, that and stockings.” 

So, I know they care...

They just care differently than I do, or differently than I want them to.

Maybe my love language is undivided attention to decorating the Christmas tree. Or, maybe I just need to get over it and be thankful for what I've got – three men in my life who let me decorate my dining room with a huge pink rug, who give me candles for my birthday and Christmas, who occasionally take me to the ballet and try really hard not to break the fancy china dishes when we use them.

Just like so many things in my life, the decorating of the Christmas tree doesn't “look” and feel exactly like I think it should. But, just like my crazy, quirky, mismatched tree, I want to love it or at least embrace it as mine.

I'll never stop oohing and aahing over the ornaments and wanting the boys to look at the pictures in their Noah's Ark First Christmas ornaments. I may still feel like sighing and huffing a little. I'll probably still make hot chocolate and turn Christmas music on. But, I hope I remember that none of this stuff really matters.

Whether we even have a tree or not, we'll still celebrate the birth of Jesus. We'll still sing carols at church and struggle to find the perfect gift for each family member. I hope I remember that it's not how we decorate the tree but who is decorating it. It's not the ornaments and stories, but those three men who love me so much and who I so desperately love. 

 I hope you loved your Christmas tree this year. But, whether you did or you didn't, my prayer for you and me in 2017 is that we love our lives, too; bare, missing pieces, mismatched, kind of funky and beautiful. Oh, so beautiful.

“Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.”

-Norman Vincent Peale