Christmas Decorating 2023

On Sunday, Rob and I put up our Christmas tree! As we worked, we listened to Christmas music (and the thunder and rain) and chatted about our childhood Christmas memories.

“We’d always put up our tree on a Friday night,” I said. “Back then, a Christmas tree lot was so festive that picking out the tree was a big part of the fun. The lot would be lit with strings of white lights, the trees standing tall, in rows, as if they were still alive and growing in a forest far up north. A fire blazed in a metal barrel, and Kris and I would run around and play in the shadowy, fragrant Christmas tree forest, dressed in our pajamas and winter coats.”

“The people selling the trees were always from Michigan or Minnesota or someplace like that,” Rob said. “They’d grown the trees themselves and hauled them down to Florida. You’d find that out because your dad or somebody would strike up a conversation.”

“I know!” I said. “The tree people were always from the North—from the North Pole, it seemed to me. I thought they might even know Santa, that they were in league with him somehow, kind of like the elves.”

“Yeah,” Rob said. “There was something magical about them, the way they appeared so suddenly at Christmastime . . . and disappeared just as fast.”

“We always chose a cedar tree,” I said, “because that’s the kind of tree Dad had as a boy in North Carolina. A cedar tree makes a really nice Christmas tree. It has a sort of delicate, ethereal, fairy-like quality, especially when you’re really liberal with the icicles.”

“I think we always had a Scotch pine,” Rob said.

“Kris and I always named our tree,” I went on. “And talked to her every day. And tried to plant her in the yard in January, even though she had no roots. And then she’d inevitably turn brown and fall over and I’d cry and cry.”

As we talked and decorated, the cats were up to their usual Christmas antics—climbing the tree, batting at ornaments, and napping on the tree skirt. Rob and I hung only tough, unbreakable ornaments, in case our furry friends ended up knocking the tree over.

“It’s too bad we don’t have any treats to eat while we decorate,” I said after we’d been working for several hours. “When you were a kid, did your mom used to serve any fun tree-decorating snacks?”

“We’d usually have Christmas chocolates of some sort,” Rob said. “Maybe some Christmas M&Ms . . .”

“Oh, that sounds good,” I said. “And when you were done decorating, did you go and stand in the street so you could see how the tree would look through the window, to people passing by?”

“Of course,” Rob said.

“It would be so late,” I said, “but we always had to do that, at the end. That was the last step. We’d stand in the street and gaze at the tree glowing through the living-room window and say it was our prettiest tree ever.”