A Christmas Story: To Decorate or Not To Decorate

“A Christmas Story: To Decorate or Not to Decorate”

I haven’t decided if I will decorate for Christmas this year. Last year on December 24^th, I promised I’d never do it again.

The seven-foot tree that cost me nearly $100 lost lots of needles driving home from the tree-getting place. Earlier that day, I’d spent two hours dragging boxes of ornaments, tinsel, lights and the tree stand from the attic. Twice I slipped on the pull-down stairs and cut my ankle in two different areas. The extra large Band-Aids stopped the bleeding.

It was already dark when I pulled my pick-up into the driveway. The motion lights illuminated my path to the garage where the stand was ready to accept my Douglas fir tree. I loosened the four screw-like holders by turning each one no less than fifty-seven times. They were in the closed position so the stand could fit into the original box. My tennis elbow flared up a bit.

Singing “Silent Night,” I walked back to the truck to slide the tree base into the stand. Crap, I thought. It didn’t fit. The tree’s circumference was too large for the base. I had to trim my seven-foot tree to a spot where the diameter would fit the stand.

My head hit the door jam in the crawl space under my shop when I was looking for my chainsaw. Something wet started running off my bald head and down the side of my face. I had cut my head entering the thirty-inch high opening. I wiped my face and smeared something red onto my shorts. The stain was a brighter red than the previous blood trails from my ankle injuries earlier. I used another extra large Band-Aid for my head.

Back at my pickup, I kept walking over to the motion lights so they would turn on and I could see exactly where to cut the tree. After some fifteen attempts to start that damn chainsaw, it finally cranked. My tennis elbow became more painful and my shoulder began to throb from my rotator cuff repair earlier that year. My fingers nearly stuck together from the sap and I had difficulty releasing them from the trigger on the saw.

A thump was heard when eighteen-inches of tree fell to the driveway. I shimmied. I pushed. I wiggled that five and a half foot tree into the stand. The tree base was so close to fitting into the stand. The ball-peen hammer dented the bottom of the stand slightly when I finally hammered it into place.

The throbbing in my left thumb from where I’d hit it with the hammer was tolerable. That pain was nothing compared to my elbow each time I turned the screws into the tree base. My shoulder didn’t hurt at all dragging that tree down the sidewalk into the front door. That’s because I’d used my other arm. There was a carpet of needles on the sidewalk behind me and into the living room. It sure enough smelled like Christmas.

Ten minutes later the scent of pine needles was replaced with the smell of 10% ethanol gasoline. I washed my hands in it to eliminate the sap. There was a little poof when I lit a cigar. The singed hair on the back of my hand fell to the floor and I noticed a small burn spot on my hand. Another Band-Aid covered the blister. I figured if I was going to be dumb, I had to be tough.

I spent the next two hours in the garage untangling lights and testing each one trying to locate the dead one. When one light goes out they all go out. I sipped on bourbon and smoked my stogie.

My wife, “Trixie” met me in the middle of a three thousand light string. The very last one was loose. She plugged the string into the electrical outlet and stood back up. “What happened to your eyebrows? They’re gone.”

More singed hair fell to the garage floor as I wiped my barren frontal bone. Oops. Moments later I looked into the bathroom mirror and smiled. I was void of eyebrows. Now, there was a bloodstain on my face and side of my head, an extra large Band-Aid on my baldhead, and another on the back of my hairless hand. I thought it was pretty funny.

The Christmas CD of the group, Alabama must have comforted out cats. They came out from under the bed and into the living room to help us decorate. I got another glass of bourbon.

Initially Trixie and I asked each other where one ornament and another was purchased during our twenty-five years of marriage. We took our time and talked of trips we had taken across America. It was our tradition to buy Christmas ornaments wherever we visited. The throbbing in my left thumb and the blister on the back of my right hand intensified. I sipped more bourbon.

The damn cats kept lying on the ornament boxes and shredding the worn out tissue paper that protected the trinkets. I managed to break three ornaments when I lost concentration while pushing the cats off the coffee table. It seemed like the Christmas music got louder.

After some forty-five minutes Trixie and I stopped talking about our special ornaments and were more focused with hanging them on the tree. I turned off the blaring music. Three times of hearing the same songs was enough. Twice I had to pull tinsel from the cats’ paws. “Peaches” scratched my hand and forearm. Darn it. I was bleeding again in more spots and I was out of the extra large Band-Aids. There were now two medium sized on my left forearm.

Then the critiquing began. We walked around the tree at least ten times each. Following our Christmas tradition, Trixie pointed to the tree’s bald spots. I didn’t care. I bumped my throbbing thumb and drug my blistered hand across branches to hook ornaments in places that Trixie said were barren. And then I quit. I sat down and glared at Peaches. She ran off into the bedroom carrying a small wooden ornament in her mouth.

 No fewer than nineteen times I must have heard the following statements. “How does this look? Is this straight? Do you see any empty spots?”

I rubbed the top of my head in disgust and made it bleed again. I sat on the couch giving pressure to the wound with a paper towel. My shoulder pain intensified and my elbow hurt from pushing down on my head. The other cat did a dive off my legs and I was scratched and bleeding in a new spot. I didn’t care. I finished my bourbon and fell into a trance.

Trixie turned off all the interior lights and went outside to admire our work. I tagged along. It was a pretty sight. I noticed how quiet it was walking on the sidewalk over the bed of pine needles.

We returned to the inside, turned the lamps on and Trixie’s eyes were fixed staring at the tree. She looked at me and said, “The tree is crooked.”

Our divorce is final in two weeks.