In the Shadows of My Christmas Tree
- Dec 23, 2015
- 4 min read
There is a darkness that lurks in the shadows of this tree. Behind each ornament is a story, and enclosed in each story is heartbreak. The traditions we once held dear are now elusive or, at best, rushed.
Last year was my first year as a single mom and a left-behind, but I was not going down without a fight. We WOULD continue our traditions. Regardless of my strep throat and cellular oculitis and emergency room visit, I was going to make this happen. With body aches and a fever, I attempted to hacksaw the thing down. My son Aidan was little help, despite how his 10-year old machismo argued otherwise.
Humiliated and defeated, we asked for help. When we finally got the tree home, it didn’t fit into the stand. Enter hammer and screwdriver and profanity and declarations that I WAS strong (“And don’t you ever let anyone tell you otherwise, Aidan!”).
After Christmas, I burned the tree in the fire pit, along with the stand I couldn’t remove.
Flash forward one year. I could have put up the fake one: the one we already owned, the one we’d bought the year we fought about traipsing through the snow with an infant, but it was the tree that has become symbolic of all I am not.
It was more than a tree. It was a challenge and a testament to all I have become. I want tradition. I want my Christmas back. I want those moments spent with my kids, relaxing in the living room as the cold winds and snow rage outside. I want the carols and the cocoa and the cuddling. I want what I had, and when I bite into that Christmas cookie, I am eight years old again, decorating the tree with my mom. I want that for my kids.
What I get is a week alone while they do these things with their dad. And, not wanting the tree decorating to go the way pumpkin carving went, yielding disinterest because they’d just done it with dad, I want it first. A friend asked me, “Why do you need to put up the tree first? Is it a competition?” A competition, no, but there is little that the second tree has to offer. It’s no longer a magical moment; it’s a chore. It’s only decoration. It’s only decoration.
So, forgoing any ceremonial cut-your-own hoopla, I went to Menards during my lunch break and bought a $20 tree. We decorated it in two hours on two different days.
And then, the tree fell over.
It smashed several ornaments, including the baby’s handprint. It spilled a gallon of water over the presents I’d recently wrapped, books included. I cried tears of remorse for what I must have done wrong to wreck my marriage, tears of guilt for not providing my kids the Christmas all kids deserve, and tears of pity for myself. I struggled, struggled, to place the tree upright, securing it with nails and yarn in my wall, and went to work. It fell again. I leaned it against the bookshelves and laid concrete blocks on the base of the stand. And it fell again, soaking more presents. Pine needles down my shirt and sap in my hair, I conceded. I gave up. And my daughter heard my pain. She encouraged me onward, and we got the tree up in the stand. So far, a happy ending.
But some years, there’s nothing happy about Christmas. We put on our game faces and wrap the presents we can afford while ignoring or excusing those we cannot. We avoid Social media because it is riddled with idyllic images of families we are not. We inhale and forget to exhale, bracing ourselves for the disappointments.
We resent the commandment to “spend time with one another” as a way to show true love because sometimes that is out of our control, the time stolen by the shadows.
Christmas might not be the most wonderful time of the year, despite what the cliche, overplayed song says. There are people who have just lost a loved one, who are on assignment overseas or unable to afford the trip home, who are suffering from illness or addiction, who are dying themselves.
But then we hear that small voice telling us “one more time” and put the tree back in the stand to stand again, knowing full well it might fall. We stand again, knowing we might fall.
We recognize the season for what it is, not a holiday hijacked by expectations of perfect Christmas cards and Facebook posts, elf positions and checked off lists, but instead a season of kindness towards strangers as much as friends and family, a time to play, a time to reflect on what the Lord has given us, a time to count our blessings, a time to listen in solitude to our hearts speak the truth about how far we have come and where we are headed.
We may not get every movie watched and every cookie baked, but we donate school supplies to Syrian refugees and hats and gloves to the cold and food to the hungry and candy to the mailman.
We teach our kids the power of kindness.
We relinquish our grasping, desperate hold on time and tradition, choosing not to see time as the smashed destruction of the ornaments beneath the limbs of the fallen tree but as crystals of glass with the potential to reflect what is good. What we have now -- not yesterday or tomorrow -- is good. It may not be what we expected or what we wanted, but the time we have now, today, is good.
As a mother, I know we put way too much pressure on this holiday, but Christ was born in the humblest of places, lit by a star. Let us recognize the humble places we find ourselves and others in and accept the second or third chance to right the tree and shine the light on the shadows. This year? For the first time ever, my kids voted that I should place the star on the tree.
Katherine is an adventurous mother of three. Weekends and holidays are spent hiking, making glorious messes, and creating lasting memories as a family. As a recent single mom, she continues their adventures with vigor and determination.
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