When my husband and I got married, we decided we were done with the artificial Christmas trees of our youth, those take-apart creations that hibernated in a dark attic all year. Not for us a manmade Tannenbaum bearing suspicious resemblance to a collection of green toilet brushes. Those were fine for our parents, for our childhood days. For our new life only the real thing would do. We wanted authenticity and freshness. We were real tree people, and we wanted a real Christmas tree.
We got it, and we learned a few things about a real tree.
It’s messy. We wanted the scent of our living tree to fill our first little apartment. It did, because within hours of bringing home the festal bough, pine needles covered nearly every square foot of our tiny living space.
A real tree is also a lot of work. First, the carpentry: sawing off the bottom of the trunk and any extra branches. Then, the telemetry: trying to get the tree to stand perpendicular to the floor by adjusting the trio of thumbscrews on the green and red metal tree stand. Torture.
From there on out, it’s maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. Each year we tried different methods of keeping our tree alive. We kept it away from drafts and heating vents. We added baking soda to the water to help keep it fresh. We tried adding corn syrup. In case you didn’t know, corn syrup and water will ferment, adding another natural but not-so-pleasant scent to the holidays.
But we were real tree people, and so we persisted year after year, trying different kinds of trees and preservative concoctions. All with similar results—a dry shedding tree.
Then our military life took us to Anderson Air Force Base in Guam. The first Christmas we were there, we learned the only real Christmas trees on our tropical island were shipped from Oregon. They had a big price tag and a big head start on the drying and dying process. We estimated they had been cut down and put on a boat around October.
So that year, reassuring ourselves that we were still real tree people at heart, we decided we would buy an artificial tree. It was only temporary, of course. As soon as we were back in the states we’d go back to the real thing, naturally. We drove across the island to the navy exchange and plunked down our seventy-five bucks for a six-foot tree in a cardboard box.
And we have never looked back.
Turns out we are artificial tree people. It was an epiphany. Cue the bright star and the wise men. I realize that for real tree people all the hassle of keeping a tree alive is worthwhile, and decorating it is a joy. I’m not trying to convert anyone. I’m just saying we had been living a lie, until the truth set us free.
We decorated that same artificial tree for twenty-three Christmases. It logged a lot of miles in our military life. It crisscrossed the United States, made several voyages across both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and heralded our family Christmases in seven states, three continents, two foreign countries, and one U.S. territory.
Our artificial tree doesn’t require pampering. It doesn’t smell good, but it also never stinks or becomes a fire hazard. And it’s easy to decorate! None of those real trees ever had just the right places for all our ornaments. Their branches resisted adornment, fighting back with sharp needles and sticky sap. But on our fake tree, we can hang decorations pretty much wherever we want. We can even bend the make-believe branches to make the perfect spot. And there’s no watering, no worrying about when the thing will die. We only have to sit back and admire it.
Real trees should be so easy.
Real Christmases should be so easy. Often, they are not.
I wish I could bend the branches of the season so that every plan I make for the holiday would hang in exactly the right place, catching the light of each shining moment, while Perry Como croons in the background; but sometimes difficult circumstances or prickly relationships intrude into my best-laid Christmas plans.
Our Christmas letters often represent a flawless life that’s only half the story: the kids’ stellar grades, proud career successes, impressive travel destinations, a lovely picture of a smiling family. The other half is less photogenic: the financial worries, family discord, failures, and fears.
I confess I have spent too much time over the years trying to produce the perfect Christmas, and I have to wonder why. Is a flawless life the requirement for a perfect Christmas? I must believe it is, because each year, I try to crank it out. But real life and real Christmases are not like my artificial tree. I can’t bend them to suit my wishes.
Some holidays bring no joy. The branches stick out in all the wrong places, the needles fall off, or the whole thing withers before our eyes. Our very best efforts may fail to produce even one shining moment. Maybe the shadow of illness or loss hangs over the season. Perhaps death, distance, or deployment has taken someone away from us. The expectations swirling around the “most wonderful time of the year” only add to the pain and disappointment.
It’s time to bring our artificial tree out of its attic hideaway once again. We have an even bigger tree now—like I said, we’re artificial tree people, and we’re not ashamed. We’ll cover it with lights and shape its branches to hold our favorite ornaments and memories. We’ll gather our family around our tree and do our best to create more happy memories. Sometimes we’ll succeed. Sometimes we’ll fail. We may spend too much, fight over something trivial—or something important—and hurt one another. Some nights one or more of us may lie awake and worry, or cry, or fume. I hope we’ll also apologize, comfort, and forgive.
We’re artificial tree people, but we’re real Christmas people, and real Christmases are like that. Our perfection is not required or possible. We can’t produce our own joy with any tree, real or fake. No day on the calendar, no candles at the altar, no songs by the fireside can do it either. Not even snow. And I love snow.
It is true that a flawless life is the requirement for the perfect Christmas—but not mine. Christ’s. His flawless life made Christmas possible. The only perfect Christmas was the first one, and it was enough. The only perfect tree is the one he died on, and it is enough.
For each real Christmas and every day in between, he will always be enough.
Terri Barnes is a writer and book editor and is the author of Spouse Calls: Messages from a Military Life.
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
John 11:25-26