It's Christmas!

We got a Christmas tree tonight!!!!! Woohoo!
I know that is exciting for most people, but for me it is super exciting!
I remember as a child sitting in awe on the carpet as my father assembled the giant fake Xmas tree that he put together every year. It was one of those hideous dinosaurs that you had to match color to color each inch of the way. My dad would get frustrated but my brother and I were there to make sure we had all the colors of the branches together to give him as he moved on to the next step. It was one of the few things my brother and I agreed upon.
With the tree assembled, we were not able to decorate it just yet. I remember that clearly. My father had had enough with putting it together and wanted nothing further that night.
Being that we lived next door to our grandparents and the fact that they were semi retired, gave them the job of coming over to our house while my brother and I were still at school and putting the lights on the tree.
That was the official go ahead. Once the lights were on, we were free to decorate to our hearts content.
We were nearly giddy all through the school day, knowing that when we got home there would be fresh strands of blinking lights on our artificial tree…not that we could plug them in…no, that was left for the adults. But the mere fact that they were on the tree meant that my brother and I could pull a full force assault on the tree with our decorations, no matter how horrendous they were.
Tinsel was my favorite. Who could ignore the shiny silver glassiness that adorned the “leaves” of the tree. I loved to pull all the tinsel out and just play in it. This was of course, discouraged.
At the end of the day, after the tree was assembled and lit, my brother and I made haste with the decorations. As if that would hurry Santa down the chimney and deliver our presents faster.
After my father left and it was just my brother and I attending to the tree, the magic wore off. After my fifteenth birthday we didn’t even go on with the charade. There was no point. Christmas wasn’t about the tree or decorations. It wasn’t about much other than family for the few slim years we could afford nothing else.
Now…19 years after I have ever possessed or decorated a Christmas tree, I find myself giddy. I want to document the process on video, though it is a small tree on a table. I want to shout from the rooftops that I have a Christmas tree and I surely can’t wait to string up the lights and put the small green and gold ornaments on it. And I might have gone just a little bit overboard in the star that changes color on the top. It will probably weigh down the whole tree and make it droop, but I don’t care. It is Christmas and I have a tree!

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