There are a myriad of responses one would receive if they asked a hundred people their thoughts on Christmas. It would fall somewhere between "over the top jingle bell fanatics" to the platform owned and operated by Scrooge himself. I hesitate to admit it, but I am close to the jingle bell side of the continuum. I absolutely love Christmas. I love every aspect of it. The hustle bussel of last minute shoppers to the melodious reminders of Christ being the center of it all.
My tradition has been to begin the festivities by decorating my house the day after Thanksgiving. Going into that fallish holiday, I realized I would have a dilemma this year. I had no Christmas tree. My youngest daughter, Amy, talked me into trading trees last year because the one she frugally bought off of Craig's list would not fit in her living room. She needed my smaller tree lest it encroach upon the boundaries her living room afforded. My tree had seen better days, but I readily agreed. She did an amazing job of taking the worn out branches that looked wilted from a century of living 335 days of the year scrunched inside a torn, yet crowded box and made it look like it was the proud winner of a Macy's Christmas tree contest. I didn't know the tree could ever be that pretty. I was impressed and intrigued to see if I could do the same.
With the new challenge of creating a beautiful tree, I took her larger tree and put it up in my usual spot in front of the living room windows. It didn't take long before I realized there was a big problem. I am not an engineer, but somehow I suddenly was thrust into the role of figuring out how to make this tree which most comfortable in a leaning position appear to be standing straight and tall to those who laid eyes on it. I failed. For that year I had to endure the leaning tree and pray that when the back door was opened to let my dog Mojo out, the wind would not blow it over. The day after Christmas, that tree found itself on the curb waiting to be relieved of duty.
Thus, no tree would be ready for the day after Thanksgiving this year. I was up the night before turkey day with my oldest daughter Carol until 2:00 a.m. on my feet cleaning and cooking and getting up at eight o'clock the next morning being on those same feet the majority of the day. Finally, I sat down after the dishes were done and put my feet up for a well deserved rest. We began talking about my need for a tree and somewhere from the wildest parts of our imaginations, we came up with the idea to go to Garden Ridge to find one. Yes, Thanksgiving day, we took our pumpkin and turkey filled tummies out into the cold in a quest for the perfect tree.
Though my swollen feet and aching back tried to rebel, my mind superseded their whimpering and led a group of us on a single focused shopping spree. The strong and the brave...meaning Carol, my niece Christina, and my future daughter-in-law Liz, climbed into my car on a journey to save my holiday tradition.
Though it clearly is not popular in today's holiday fashion rules, I have clung to the love of a tree with colored lights. My kids say it is because I'm old, but I choose to believe it is because I am wise beyond their years and understand the true beauty of Christmas decorations. Well, apparently the wise ones like myself don't make the purchasing decisions of Garden Ridge. They had a few within my financial range with colored lights, but clearly the best shape trees were adorned in plain and bland white lights. My apologies for any offense to those who mistakenly like white lights on a tree. I hesitantly talked myself into buying one. Carol and Christina worked like skilled laborers to put the box in our squeaky cart so that I could take it to the checkout. We walked a bit more around the store to see if there was anything else we couldn't live without and by the time I was ready to make the payment, I talked myself out of buying the tree. It wasn't really what I wanted.
So, we went home empty handed. Hard to believe that four women went home without a single purchase but it is a true story. The next day, we began the search again. All of us, except Liz, got up Friday morning and began the hunt.. First we went to Steinmart for the fun of it. We felt like we had to buy something because the scratch off coupon was screaming at us from the instant we walked in the door. Carol and I both bought a blanket for ourselves which we subsequently took back two days later. But the 20% off on my coupon felt good for the moment. Carol quickly ran into Michael's and found a tree she thought I might like. We decided we would go back and look at it later because we were meeting Amy and her roommate, Ashley, at Target.
I looked at the trees there but they were surprisingly overpriced. Ashley had to go mail a package so Amy crawled into the car with us and we headed to Hobby Lobby. Their purchasing people must have been in their twenties, because they had ninety percent of their trees with white lights. What were they thinking?? They were all too expensive anyway. All the shopping made us hungry and instead of going home and eating Thanksgiving leftovers like the smart women we are, we all decided to spend money and go to Logan's for a meal. We wolfed down the scrumptious food and then Amy went back in the car with Ashley while Carol, Christina and I headed to my least favorite store, WalMart.
I was obviously getting desperate to find my tree! While my niece and I had great laughs over the Santa Clause that shook his booty while singing, we did not find a Christmas tree worthy of taking home. Afterwards everyone wanted to go to the Round Rock Outlet Mall to look around. I put my Christmas tree mission on hold and went with the crowd. It was fun walking around but my feet began to remind me that I had really been overworking them the last few days. With the thought of giving them a rest, yet continuing on the tree search, I suggested we go to Sears. The drive would be a much needed reprieve. It was a waste of time. The trees there were way overpriced. At that moment I had to admit defeat for the day. If I didn't, I think my feet would have separated themselves from my body and crawled under the bin of blankets by the front door for the night. We drove back to the Target parking lot for Christina to pick up her car and they talked me into checking out the tree at Michael's which Carol spotted earlier that day, but again, it wasn't what I wanted. It just wasn't meant to be. I did however walk out with a fake pointsetta. It would go nicely next to the fat adorable stone frog I had purchased at WalMart. At least this time , I was not going home empty handed.
Saturday was not a day that opened up for tree shopping. Sunday morning I went to hear my son, Brian, preach at his church. I could talk about what a great job he did, but then I would be off task and this story would take even longer than it already has. Just leave it at... I was a proud mama. On the way home I decided to go by Lowe's to look at their trees. They had several but they were all up high, way over my head. That may not seem high to those who know me but from my perspective they were way up there. I must have stood there for fifteen minutes looking between two trees and yes, they both had colored lights. I finally picked the one that I thought was the best option. I had a nice young man put it in my cart and load it in my car.
Brian brought it in the house and he said he would help me put it up on Monday. Unfortunately I worked too late and was exhausted when I got home so we changed the date to Thursday. Again, I worked late but by the time I got home, Brian had half of the tree together while Liz was making dinner. After they ate, we began to decorate it. While doing so, I had this horrible nagging thought that my tree looked sickly. Was this really the tree I saw at the store. It looked so different at eye level then it did when I was well below it looking up adoringly. My tree was really skinny and kind of had a Charlie Brown feel to it. We played our Christmas music and put my random collection of ornaments on it. Didn't help much. No amount of cutesier decorations could make it look like a well rounded tree. I sat down and just stared at it asking myself a very poignant question, "Why did you not just purchase the tree at Garden Ridge?" The colored lights were great! But, even that did not help. I was really discouraged. All the looking and all the punishment I put my poor feet through. Was it all for naught? Should I never have been allowed to go pick one out by myself. Was that my mistake?
Than Saturday came. Brian helped me rearrange the living room and put out all my Christmas decorations and when we were all finished, I told him that the tree was actually growing on me. It was like an ugly. lovable puppy with sad eyes begging me to keep him because even ugly dogs deserve a home. Now I am sitting writing this story with my beautiful colored lighted tree standing proudly to my right and I know with all assurance I picked the perfect tree. The only question now is. . .which of my kids would want me to leave it to them in my will?
