| A
New Kind of Christmas |
| Ah, the smell of plastic in the morning! |
| Saturday afternoon, after my wife and youngest daughter
came home from doing some Christmas shopping, they dragged
a very large box into the family room. It was about six feet
long and two feet square. I was curious but cautious about
the box. Then I looked at the printing on the side: "Christmas
Tree." |
| A Christmas tree in a box? |
| There it wasäin my traditional house with a traditional
fireplace with a traditional couch with a traditional cat
sleeping on itäa real, fake, live, plastic Christmas tree.
It was more than I could bear. |
| What would we decorate it with? Fake lights? Fake angels?
Fake Santas? |
| At first I couldn't really talk about it. I just let the
big box sit there. I didn't say a word. I was in a state of
some sort of Christmas confusion. |
| "Well?" my daughter and wife said in unison. I was now forced
to make a decision, to give an opinion, to render a verdict
on this real, fake, live, plastic Christmas tree. |
| "I never thought it would come to this," I said. "A fake
tree in my very real house." |
| But the longer I stared at the unopened box, the longer
I remained silent, the more I thought about the whole idea.
Some things, after all, had changed over the years. |
| For one thing, our children now have their own lives, and
while they all live around here and spend Christmas with us,
a real tree just didn't have the same meaning any more. |
| Also, my wife, Betsy, did all the Christmas decorating.
She hitched up the horses, dragged the sled out of the barn,
made the hot chocolate and loaded us all into the contraption.
|
| She then drove the horses 30 miles out to the farm where
she trudged through four feet of snow, chopped down a beautiful
eight-foot spruce, loaded it into the sled, and then drove
the horses back home as we all drank hot chocolate and sang
Christmas carols. |
| It was a wonderful life. At least for me. |
| Truth be known, Betsy and one of our children would usually
just go down to Elden Street and buy a Charlie Brown Christmas
tree from the Boy Scouts. Some how the tree was decorated
before Christmas Eve. |
| Thinking about all the work she always did at Christmas
time while I sat on the couch and said things like, "Oh, no.
I think the red ornament would look better over there," and,
"That string of lights is a little out of place," the idea
of a real, fake, live, plastic Christmas tree started to seem
like a good idea. |
| On Monday, Betsy finally opened the box to take a look.
She hauled out the instructions and put together the center
poleäall seven feet of it. It was wrapped with greenery, but
all we had was a seven-foot green pole. |
| "Where are the branches," I asked? She stared. I shut my
mouth, and didn't mention that the pole listed a little to
the south. |
| I'd like to take this whole fake Christmas tree a step farther.
I think we should wrap fake Christmas presents with fake paper
and fake ribbons to put under our fake Christmas tree and
then just drag them out next year. |
| The fake diamond earrings I suggested didn't go over very
well, however. |
| Come to think about it, Christmas is so much more than trees
and lights and ornaments and presents and hot chocolate and
cookies. It's all of those things, of course, but I'll always
remember those Christmas eves at church with our little children
and then coming home to read "'Twas the Night Before Christmas"
and then the Christmas story from St. Luke. |
| And before long, I suspect, the branches will be up on our
new real, fake, live, plastic Christmas tree, the lights will
be strung and the ornaments will be hung. |
| Betsy will still have done all the work, but at least she
didn't have to get the horses out of the barn this year. |
| And that's Our Town this week. |
