In response to my post about wanting to celebrate Kwanzaa this year, I got a very thoughtful (read: long) email from an FCN reader on the importance of Christmas, reminding me that celebrating our Savior's birth is much more important than remembering “heritage.” She further rebuked my post, saying that I was detracting from the Christmas spirit.
Frankly, she’s right. To the three other readers out there, know that I am not really intending to celebrate Kwanzaa. The post I put up yesterday was the result of hours of counseling with socio-noneconomic, cultural and ethnic therapists who are trying to introduce human-like emotions to my psyche. They went on a Kwanzaa tangent at my last session and somehow they got to me, causing my inadvertent Kwanzaa support. Please be comforted by the fact that I am still going to celebrate Christmas this year.
In fact, my family and I decorated the house for the occasion yesterday. We pulled various suspicious items from storage and organized ornaments for hanging. Maybe organized isn’t the right word. We opened up the dusty crates that house the ornaments eleven and a half months a year and dumped their contents out over the tile floor and then used a bottle of Elmer’s glue and some string to repair the most precious memory filled decorations. Then we hung dull colored, but highly reflective ropes at awkward angles and scattered shiny confetti around the house.
When we were finished there were about as many decorations on the floor as the wall, so we brought out a vacuum cleaner to clean up the mess. We emptied some of the contents of the vacuum cleaner bag on the tree immediately, the rest we put in the decoration crates for storage until next Christmas.
It's amazing how a few hours of work can bring holiday cheer to an otherwise calm household. Decorating turns my normally docile family into a horde of perfectionist fiends who must have the house just so. One brother feels confetti should cover the mantle, another wants it to “flow” out from under the coach; I like it in the fireplace. Loud Christmas music is a dangerous catalyst to our frantic resolve and we move around as if we are on a reality TV show.
The best part about yesterday was setting up the tree. A few years ago, my father decided that purchasing, transporting and setting up a real pine was too much work. I personally think the decision had something to do with the average eight months it took to remove all the pine needles from the carpet after Christmas, but my father said something about having to water it every morning. Our last real tree was unceremoniously dumped by the side of the road and my brothers and I watched mournfully as the garbage man hoisted it into the compactor and drove away.
There was a certain quiet in our house after the last pine left; somehow, we felt, a fake tree would never quite cut it. The tree is a symbol of Christmas. And a fake sign of a symbol of a real event rings hollow.
By the time the next year rolled around I had forgotten all about the real pine and put up no protest when we visited our first specialty fake tree boutique (actually it was Wal-Mart). We ended up getting a spring loaded “tree” that opened up like an umbrella. The product – we purchased “heirloom strength” – was guaranteed to unfurl at least 20 times, theoretically lasting more than 20 Christmases. Unfortunately, I opened the new fangled thing at least that many times while trying to figure out how to put it up the first time. We ended up leaving it, in all its heirloom strength fakery, on the sidewalk after the holiday, just like a normal tree – an expensive spring loaded plastic normal tree.
The next year we looked into miniature trees. These are exceptionally small fake trees that look like the victims of a terrible birth defect. “Miniatures” are wrapped in red to hide their pitiful roots and are infused with a pine scent that usually turns into the smell of a happy meal forty-eight hours after purchase. Unfortunately, but they are too small to hold many ornaments. The one we got was artistically titled “Petit Noël” and came “pre-lighted.” It was also covered in “snow,” tiny shards of white plastic that, if viewed from blurred eyes at a distance, looked like cat litter. So many people guests in our house were curious where our tree was and, after pointing several times to the ugly pile of white sitting next to the hearth, my family decided on reform.
This year we have a fake tree that takes a few minutes to set up, but looks perfectly triangular when in place. It has built in color rotating lights and a motion detector that shouts “Merry Christmas” if you get too close. The chief feature of the tree, a fancy star that only turns on as nighttime approaches, broke when we pulled it out of the box, but we imagine it works anyway and are compensated liberally by all the “Merry Christmases” the thing shouts.
We took our time, yesterday, emptying the vacuum cleaner over the tree and spreading the dust around to look like snow. The branches are stiffer on fake trees and we were able to hoist large quantities of grime on the greenery before they began to sag.
I learned something about Christmas doing all this decorating: It really doesn’t matter what you put on the walls or how you remember Christ’s birth; as long as the message points to the Savior and the ornaments tell the Christmas story, nobody cares if they are done “right.”
Now, as I look around the family room, it really feels like Christmas. The stockings are hung upside down to keep dust from collecting inside and the confetti burns brightly in the fireplace, but the Christmas story is evident in the crumpled ornaments on the dusty tree. I sigh happily and begin to unravel the garland that is mysteriously wound around my neck.
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