So …
Every year for Christmas I like to do something a little
different. One year I did a theme which
was “Holiday at Hogwarts,” and featured things such as ornaments made from
empty boxes of Bertie Botts’ Every Flavor Beans. One year I did a “traditional theme” and used
wrapping paper to wrap the wall behind my tree to make it pop. One year I made ornaments from shells we
found on the beach and covered them with glitter to make a very Island
sort of tree the first year we spent on this island.
Joseph is pretty easy going when it comes to my themes and
ideas and inspirations. At times this
can be infuriating, especially when I want an opinion. But mostly I find this good for my creativity
when Mr. Logical isn’t criticizing my every move. Joseph’s one request is that we never kill a
tree to make our Christmas. I grew up in
the Rocky Mountains of northern Idaho where we cut down our own tree every
year. I loved the smell of white fir and
cold coming into the house. But Joseph
(who drives a beast of a pickup truck) thinks that cutting trees isn’t very
environmentally-minded. He bought me a
Martha Stewart pre-lit tree that stands four-and-a-half feet tall. It has white lights and has graced my house
many a year regardless of the theme and has always looked great. This year, however, I wanted something more
natural and less symmetrical.
I had an idea in my head, and when I found this tree on my
dog walk one day, I couldn’t resist:
I knew it had potential.
I knew I could make this tree shine.
In my head I saw this tree in all its glory, thanks to my best friend
Martha Stewart:
Awesome, right?
So I set to work. And
soon I discovered a little known secret to the success of evergreens when it
comes to the domination of Christmas décor: evergreens are conical and taper
towards the top which is infinitely easier to wrap lights around than a tree
that gets wider towards the top. I had
to string the lights twice, and I almost poked out an eye five or six
times. I used half a cinder block to
prop the tree up and stuffed it with news paper to keep the tree in place, but
every time I tried to adjust lights, it slid around a little. I finally had to enlist Joseph and have him
prop it up with a little hemp twine at the bottom.
And here’s the other little secret about the success of
evergreens when it comes to the domination of Christmas décor: they don’t look
like skeletons! My tree looked like I
painted Kate Moss brown and tied her up in a corner. I found myself thinking that a good cheese
burger would do my tree some good, but I hung the ornaments from it just the
same. I didn’t have the money this year
to buy all new tree jewelry, so I had to make do with the ornaments I had. I strung my ornaments up with a little purple
ribbon to give the ornaments the range to fall into some of the open spaces the
branches made, but it still looked bare and sad.
Okay, I thought, what this tree needs is a little snow.
I try not to play up snow in my Christmas decorating. I grew up in snow up to my armpits and there
is nothing sadder to me than a snowman lawn ornament in a climate that shuts
its cities down when it even thinks about snowing. If you don’t have snow, don’t promote
it. But snow was the only thing I could
think of to give this tree a little weight and fullness.
If I had my way (and a lot more money) I would have bought a
few white feather boas, cut them up, and used their fluffy fabulousness to fill
in my scrawny tree. (I have always
thought that Christmas trees were a lot like drag queens anyway.) So, because I didn’t have any of my own feather
boas … that were white … I had to improvise and I found a bag of poly-fill to
use for snow. I pulled out puffs of
polyester and stuck it at the end of branches.
The overall look was very sad and I am almost too ashamed to show you
this:
What the crap is this?
When Joseph saw it he said it looked like I was trying to make a cotton
bush. That kind of made it worse and
please remind me to tell you all about how Joseph almost got shot picking
cotton in Louisiana when we went there to visit his family. (No it wasn’t 1860, it was 2003.) Needless to say, I furiously ripped every
single one of these puffs off of my tree and sat down to rethink my life.
Deep breath.
So the next thing I
tried was an old reliable Christmas treatment: paper snowflakes. Paper snowflakes got me through many a tough
Christmas in apartments that were none too jolly. What I got was a tree that had these papery,
snowflake versions of leaves on it. Fine. 
Yes, fine enough. It
was time to quit while I was ahead.
The tree is continuing to grow on me. It isn’t perfect, but it’s just fine for
me. But I will probably resort to the
Martha Stewart pre-lit 4.5 footer next year.
Much less hassle, and much prettier effect.
