Datebook: Monday, December 10th ~ 2007
This is the time of year when sleigh bells ring and the scent of pine nectar fills the air with pungent fumes.
Well, except at our house.
My husband and I have been engaged in the decade-old battle of “plastic or paper”; or in the language of the holidays—real or artificial.
I have voted for “real” for twenty years. A real, live, beautifully sculpted Douglas fir—one with tiny pine cones embedded on the branches, one with the scent of a northern forest that cannot be captured by a Glade Mist candle, one that symbolizes the blend of nature and custom that is shared around the world.
My husband has opted for the fake, pole-in-a-box version of color-coded Brillo-like limbs that assemble to look as much like a Christmas tree as those black and white puckered plastic knock-off handbags are supposed to look like classic Chanels.
Two years ago I got excited because my husband told me we were going to try something new for Christmas. I imagined trekking through the woods with the entire family, Izzy wearing a plaid sweater and making little paw prints in the snow for us to follow, carting a thermos of hot cocoa and a bag of crisp Madelines, and finding the perfect Christmas tree—size, shape, smell, color--graded like a flawless diamond. We would shake off the snow and cut it down with a small handsaw thus not disturbing the ambience of the forest setting.
My husband’s comment of seemingly spontaneous action was instead to go to the department store to purchase a “Pre Lit” tree.
Our new tree is seemingly powered by 5000 Halogen Jeep headlights. On the brightness meter, the only measurable object above our tree is in fact, the Sun. One of the benefits of this is, of course, our family room is fifteen degrees warmer than the rest of the house.
I know some families gather around the Christmas tree, trimming and decorating it together, perhaps singing Christmas songs and sipping Eggnog while humming along to “Granny Got Run Over by a Reindeer”.
This is not the case at our house.
My husband must place each ornament on the tree because only he “knows its place’. The rest of us sit on the floor holding decorations in our hands with expressions much like the young boy asking for more gruel in “Oliver Twist”—as in “please sir, can I give you more”.
The finished tree is dressed to the nines in an eclectic array of finery. We have Waterford and pre-school macaroni. We have dogs, ceramic angels, and painted crab shells. We have antique wax mixed with Precious Moments figurines.
And then we have the skate ornaments.
By skate ornaments, I don’t mean one or two. I’m talking enough to decorate the mammoth fir in Rockefeller Square. I’m sure we never intended to acquire as many as we did, just as we never thought we would own 300 Beanie Babies, but there they are never-the-less—spotlighted by 8 million candlelit beacons.
My husband takes comfort in the fact that my daughter will one day want these for her own home. But I know the truth.
Just as my son will never take the Fox Terrier when he graduates from college, my daughter will never want 600 skate ornaments for her tree.
“Why did you buy all of these?” she asks when their glass blades blind us in reflection.
“I didn’t buy ALL of them,” I answer, “some were gifts.”
She looks at me skeptically. I turn away from her and the tree of one thousand suns. It has been rumored that I seemingly “go overboard” sometimes. This is a myth, but myths are hard to defuse, look at that whole King Arthur craze.
I ponder what to do with my box of skating ornaments in the years to come and then smile at my plan. Since I cannot have a “real” tree, nor trek into the forest to covet a piney trophy of my own, I will venture forth each year, to the local Christmas tree farm and anoint one special tree of my own. Instead of tagging it and cutting it down, I will hang an ice skate ornament from its boughs and some lucky family will find a partially decorated tree in the woods.
I will hereafter be known as “The Skate Fairy”, no longer a myth, but a legend.
Mombo
Well, except at our house.
My husband and I have been engaged in the decade-old battle of “plastic or paper”; or in the language of the holidays—real or artificial.
I have voted for “real” for twenty years. A real, live, beautifully sculpted Douglas fir—one with tiny pine cones embedded on the branches, one with the scent of a northern forest that cannot be captured by a Glade Mist candle, one that symbolizes the blend of nature and custom that is shared around the world.
My husband has opted for the fake, pole-in-a-box version of color-coded Brillo-like limbs that assemble to look as much like a Christmas tree as those black and white puckered plastic knock-off handbags are supposed to look like classic Chanels.
Two years ago I got excited because my husband told me we were going to try something new for Christmas. I imagined trekking through the woods with the entire family, Izzy wearing a plaid sweater and making little paw prints in the snow for us to follow, carting a thermos of hot cocoa and a bag of crisp Madelines, and finding the perfect Christmas tree—size, shape, smell, color--graded like a flawless diamond. We would shake off the snow and cut it down with a small handsaw thus not disturbing the ambience of the forest setting.
My husband’s comment of seemingly spontaneous action was instead to go to the department store to purchase a “Pre Lit” tree.
Our new tree is seemingly powered by 5000 Halogen Jeep headlights. On the brightness meter, the only measurable object above our tree is in fact, the Sun. One of the benefits of this is, of course, our family room is fifteen degrees warmer than the rest of the house.
I know some families gather around the Christmas tree, trimming and decorating it together, perhaps singing Christmas songs and sipping Eggnog while humming along to “Granny Got Run Over by a Reindeer”.
This is not the case at our house.
My husband must place each ornament on the tree because only he “knows its place’. The rest of us sit on the floor holding decorations in our hands with expressions much like the young boy asking for more gruel in “Oliver Twist”—as in “please sir, can I give you more”.
The finished tree is dressed to the nines in an eclectic array of finery. We have Waterford and pre-school macaroni. We have dogs, ceramic angels, and painted crab shells. We have antique wax mixed with Precious Moments figurines.
And then we have the skate ornaments.
By skate ornaments, I don’t mean one or two. I’m talking enough to decorate the mammoth fir in Rockefeller Square. I’m sure we never intended to acquire as many as we did, just as we never thought we would own 300 Beanie Babies, but there they are never-the-less—spotlighted by 8 million candlelit beacons.
My husband takes comfort in the fact that my daughter will one day want these for her own home. But I know the truth.
Just as my son will never take the Fox Terrier when he graduates from college, my daughter will never want 600 skate ornaments for her tree.
“Why did you buy all of these?” she asks when their glass blades blind us in reflection.
“I didn’t buy ALL of them,” I answer, “some were gifts.”
She looks at me skeptically. I turn away from her and the tree of one thousand suns. It has been rumored that I seemingly “go overboard” sometimes. This is a myth, but myths are hard to defuse, look at that whole King Arthur craze.
I ponder what to do with my box of skating ornaments in the years to come and then smile at my plan. Since I cannot have a “real” tree, nor trek into the forest to covet a piney trophy of my own, I will venture forth each year, to the local Christmas tree farm and anoint one special tree of my own. Instead of tagging it and cutting it down, I will hang an ice skate ornament from its boughs and some lucky family will find a partially decorated tree in the woods.
I will hereafter be known as “The Skate Fairy”, no longer a myth, but a legend.
Mombo
posted by ice-dance.com @ 10:09 AM
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