Trim the Tree

Well for the first time in my life, I put up a Christmas tree in November instead of waiting until the last minute. Hold your applause, I have another announcement to share: For the first time ever, I put up lights on my window. (Thunderous Applause)

Christmas was always confusing growing up. It was that magical time when Santa Claus brought me all the stuff that I wanted out of the store and none of the stuff that I asked the elves to build through meticulous drawings, diagrams and blueprints. Every year he delivered presents to my mother's house and my father's house instead of just leaving them at one location. And despite being an honor roll student throughout my childhood, Santa always seemed to have a dollar limit. Anything over $150 was absent from the tree. For a man whose elves could build anything and whose sleigh could go anywhere, he sure had limits.
Nothing was as confusing as the holiday spirit in my house. The best way to describe it is...well, as a spirit: Some lingering entity moaning about, trapped between one place and the next. Not really at peace, nor was it happy. It just existed, hoping to move on. It was Christmas '92 when things really got weird. For my birthday, my grandmother gave me a Christmas tree. My birthday is in July, by the way. To commemorate turning 10 and my age having two digits instead of one, my grandmother gave me a Christmas tree...in the Summer. An explanation would soon follow sometime around Thanksgiving.

My grandmother felt, in her own words, that since her children were unappreciative of her efforts that she was henceforth and forevermore canceling Thanksgiving in her house. She would no longer host it, cook for it or acknowledge it. There's more to the story, but too many relatives still alive to do it justice and live to tell about it. So let's just say that when my grandmother gets mad, the Earth trembles. So, Grandma P. Diddy Allen shut down the studio. She then went on to explain that she was also done with Christmas. She wasn't wasting her time putting up a tree, but if I wanted to do it then she wouldn't stop me, so the cheap, ugly white Christmas tree became mine.

The white Christmas tree got its start in our house sometime in '88 or '89. My grandmother saw a sale on trees and sent my grandfather to retrieve one from Hechinger's. He and I got inside his 1807 Plymouth and chugged down the street to Hechinger Mall leaving a trail of deathly smoke behind us. He didn't pay attention to the fact that there was a white tree on the box and my grandmother spent the next two hours reminding him of that. Flash forward three or four years and now the tree was handed down to me.

For a few days in December I asked my grandmother to put up the tree with me and she refused. My mother wasn't interested either. Aunts didn't seem to care and uncles lived too far away. My grandfather wasn't even an option as the tree brought back too many painful memories of my grandmother cursing him out. So on the evening of December _?_ 1992, I cleared a space for my tree, dragged it up from the basement and proceeded to put together what remains to this day to be the ugliest tree I have ever seen.

Because no one with a job was interested enough to buy any, I had to use whatever ornaments and decorations that I could find in the basement. I had some gold and silver tinsel that was frayed or cut and had to be literally tied back together to fit around the whole tree. I couldn't find any hooks to put on the ornaments so that they'd hang, so I just sat them on the tree and hoped that they wouldn't fall. It was a fake tree so I just bent some of the branches upward. We had an old dusty, Chucky-looking Santa doll that my grandmother either got from a yard sale or a thrift store. I leaned him up against the tree. The tree itself leaned up against the wall because one of the legs was missing.

It was a sorry sight, but I tried to remain positive. I turned on the radio looking for Christmas music. There was a new song out for the holidays that I hadn't heard before, but after a few seconds it just made things worse. There I was, a ten year old boy in the house alone putting up the world's saddest tree by himself trying to bring some joy to the world (or at least the family). Instead of the Temptations' Silent Night or Hathaway's This Christmas, what did my ears hear for the first time?

If I
should stay
I would on-ly be in
your way.
So I'll go
but I know
I'll think of you every step of
the way
And I....

I just started balling. "Life sucks! Christmas sucks!" Just then God sent me a message:
The tree fell over.

And I
will always love you