O Christmas tree

When I was a little girl I had books on records. One of the tiny little records was a Christmas story. It was called something like the littlest Christmas tree. It was a story about a little tree in amongst other trees and how it never got picked and finally a spider spun a web on it and the frost came and it made the little tree just beautiful.
Course that tree got to live and that too made it my favorite story.
I have an odd relationship with these holiday trees. Oh My God! Did she just take the Christmas out of the TREE? get over it people
First there was a tree, one of the old fashioned aluminum trees. It was a couple of sticks with holes in them. You had to separate the branches out by the color painted tip on the end that went into the stick (or later on, after the ages had removed all trace of color, by size). So you put all 300 branches in and voila a 12 foot tree. Actually it was pretty realistic. Man they made quality back then. Needless to say this was about the worst job in the world. Scratchy, tedious, tiresome and heavy. Alright so my sister and I were very young but trust me it was hard work. Don’t even get me started on the lights… but the result was always nice. If the season got to be, well the way it always got around our house, it was nice that the tears made the lights on the tree twinkle more. Then for years we didn’t have a tree. My mom is old school religious. Learned Greek and Hebrew so she could see where King James misinterpreted the Bible. And in researching discovered the Tree itself was a pagan thing.,.and apparently against God. See The Old Testament, Jeremiah 10.
My next tree was years later. The first time I went along for the purchase of a real tree I was 18. I was celebrating Christmas with my lover’s family. Having left my own family never to look back. They always went together to get a tree. It was so festive and amazing to wander among all the tall trees. To pick one up have them wrap it in twine making a pine-scented cigar to stick out of the back end of the suburban. Getting it home and in the corner cutting the twine letting it “Sproing” out to life. Everyone decorating and re-decorating after each other. Ah, it was the first time, and it was wonderful. This was what a family Christmas was supposed to be all about. Then after Christmas the parents started the proceedings for a nasty divorce.
3 more years passed and in a lonely place of my own I decided to get into the spirit and get a real tree. It was cute and tiny, well that’s what I said about the thin little tree since it was all I could afford. I watched as they chopped it down and set it in something like a paint shaker to remove loose needles, birds nests, bugs etc. So small I threw it into the back of my ford Escort hatchback. I bought lights and hung childhood ornaments on it. It was pathetically cute. I felt a little more spirited. Christmas eve morning as I admired the lonely damn thing I saw hundreds of spiders scurrying about, weaving webs all over my ornaments and lights.
I squealed. I freaked out. Cursing I ran looking for bug spray and not finding any I ran for the hairspray. I was crying over my crappy luck, shellacking the lights, the ornaments and the webs. I went through 2 cans of aerosol and fell to the floor cross-legged, choking on the fumes and crying. I hated Christmas. It had NEVER been a kind season to me. There was nothing to fix it. I began to harden my heart. I was damned and doomed to be one of those crotchety old humbugs. I looked up at the evil tree and saw the spider webs that now looked like spun glass. I was reminded of that story from my childhood. And it mattered less and less that I was having yet another crappy Christmas, that my ornaments would have to be cleaned, that I had either killed hundreds of spiders or they were now running through my apartment. None of it was really very important. In a moment of trauma or a moment of clarity it just didn’t matter. That sad, sad tree looked unique now and the soft memory of that children’s story wrapped me in a child like wonder and glow. Somehow that poor tree and I were both better off for the spider webs, both more innocent and more festive.

Merry Christmas and may all your trees be full of spiders