Oh, Christmas Tree

On Saturday morning, I picked up my Zipcar a bit before 8 a.m. and headed out to my usual Christmas tree place in Allston.

It took me about 30 seconds to pick out a tree – I’m not one of those obsessive, fussy tree types; a couple of minutes for the guy to tie it onto my zip; and another 10 or so minutes to get back home.

I’m slightly allergic to the pollen in balsam, but Christmas that doesn’t smell of balsam is like an apple that’s not a McIntosh. No thanks.

But a couple of years ago, I read that if you rinsed your tree before you put it up, you’d wash away all those allergens. As it turns out, this actually works. Thus my plan was to once again hose down my tree in the little garden out front. This year it was a bit too cold. I didn’t want to have to drain the hose afterwards so it wouldn’t ice up. So I dragged my tree into my condo, propped it up in the shower, and rinsed it that way.

After letting it drip dry for 24 hours, I wrestled it into the stand, which is a lot easier since I invested in one of those foot-pedal operated one-person tree stands. You still have to lift it up – and Christmas trees are awkward and, even if they’re just six-footers, heavy enough – but things are much easier than they were with my old cast iron base and the four screws. This sucker was difficult enough to use when there were two of us wrangling the tree into the base and screwing those heavy-duty screws into the trunk. On my own? I did try (and succeed) for a few years, and was smart enough to realize I was going to have to go with a shorter tree. But the degree of difficulty with that cast iron base was too damned high. The pedal-operated tree stand? Easy-peasy.

(The above is not meant to imply that my late husband actually helped me with the tree beyond getting it situated in the stand. For whatever reason, Jim was not fond of Christmas. The names ‘Grinch’ and ‘Scrooge’ come to mind. But he always helped me stand it up, and – more happily for him – take it down and toss it in the recycle. Putting the tree up was, in fact, the occasion for our annual fight: the tree isn’t straight enough, the screws weren’t in their tight enough – all Jim’s concerns, by the way. He was the one there with the pliers making sure those screws were in so tight that it was going to be nearly impossible to get them unscrewed.)

Anyway, I’m not the biggest Christmas fan on the face of the earth. I’m not ‘meh’ on it, but I’m not one of those folks who counts down the days, can’t wait to get my decorations up, plays carols from Halloween on.  But there are aspects that I enjoy, and one of them is having a tree. A real tree.

And what I like most about it is decorating it.

Let’s face it, as you get older, one of life’s great pleasures is looking back and remembering. (That is, if you can minimize the looking back and remembering as it relates to the nasty bits and the regrets.) And when I’m decorating my tree, I’m remembering.

That’s because most of my ornaments are deeply personal. The plastic bells, boots, Santa in his sleigh from my parents’ first tree in 1946. The cross-stitch ones my mother made. The ones I bought when my nieces were born – the Molly one, a polar bear in a Santa outfit, is missing a foot.

I have shout-outs to pets who have passed away. A stuffed Emily my sister Kath made to honor her most excellent of cats – the most dog-like cat in the history of humankind. Sluggo the turtle. Jack the black lab.

I’ve got a dreidel on there in honor of my brother-in-law. And lots of things picked up on my travels over the years. When I hang the Santa at the Eiffel Tower, I think of the trips Jim and I made to Paris. The yellow taxi? New York visits; for both of us, our favorite city on the face of the earth. The painted eggs from Prague and Budapest. The Pinocchio from Rome. A Belleek tree, the tea pot with the shamrock on it, the shiny little Oifig an Phoist (Gaelic for Post Office). Lots of vacations in Ireland to look back on.

How is it that, given my half-German roots, I never got an ornament in Germany, home of the Christmas tree?

I do have a pickle ornament, which is a German tradition. And a wolf – a tribute to my mother’s maiden name.

I have a lot of ornaments that were given to me by friends. The cupcake. The handbag. The skates.

And a whole bunch of Beetle-related ornaments. (One of the three cars I’ve owned in my life was a New Beetle.)

Some of my ornaments are just oddballs and/or inside jokes. Like the Jello mold. The Day of the Dead angel. The nose and mustache. An armadillo. All those pigs. And the tiny little red bucket that I got as a joke for my husband. (Yes, he thought it was funny.)

When I hang my ornaments, I sing along to Christmas CD’s: Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Linda Ronstadt, Judy Collins, Billboard’s Top Ten.

There’s a lot of overlap, but each has a few songs that are one-and-onlies. Bing’s “Christmas in Killarney”, with the fake brogue towards the end. (Did anyone else ever cover this number?) Linda’s gorgeous “River.” Judy’s gorgeous “Christmas in Sarajevo.” The lovely traditional Billboard numbers, including “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.” And Nat King Cole’s magnificent “Oh, Holy Night.” (I don’t know who in their right mind would try to cover this one after listening to Nat King Cole’s version.)

I always love my tree.

It’s never perfect. I could be bothered with obsessing over the perfect physical specimen. And nothing turns me off faster than a decorator tree (other than in an institution), with everything thematic and perfectly color-coordinated. BOR-ING!

And even though I’m doing it on my own, I always enjoy putting my tree up.

Now if I just remember to water it every day…