Let me just say this for all of us: I can’t believe Christmas is only a few days away. There, done. Now no one else has to say it.
We’re reasonably well-prepared, my wife and I, for Dec. 25, with only a little more running around to do before the big day. Gifts are wrapped, most of the food bought and sweet treats are ready to be consumed.
I don’t know where you fall on the fake tree vs. real tree debate, but we’re a real tree family and have been for quite some time. There was a time I was pro plastic trees, both because I felt it wasteful to chop down a tree just to decorate a room, but also because the chintzy artificiality of a fake tree appealed to the ironic bent of my Generation X soul.
I didn’t grow up in a real tree household, though, Plastic was the standard, so I had no particular attraction or nostalgia for a real Christmas tree upon reaching adulthood. My wife, though, she loves having a real, honest-to-goodness evergreen slowly drying out in the living room, so that’s what we do.
So, the second week of December, it's become a tradition that we’d get into our winter gear, pull on boots, grab my well-oiled bow saw and head into the nearby bush to hunt us up the perfect tree. (That entire sentence is true, if you replace “winter gear” with “coats,” “bow saw” with “bank card” and “nearby bush” with “neighbourhood grocery store.”)
OK, so we don’t trek into the bush to get the tree, but I still have to saw a puck off the trunk so the thing can drink (and I do use my trusty, well-oiled bow saw for the task). In spirit, it’s exactly like our ancestors of old, only more convenient.
And I have to admit, I went from Christmas tree ambivalence into the pro-real tree camp fairly quickly. You just can’t beat a real tree, both esthetically and environmentally.
A fake tree might help you make happy memories, but the production of artificial Christmas trees is all cost, no benefit. The metal is mined, the plastic is extruded from oil and coloured using a chemical soup of dyes. Other than the pleasure (but really, it’s the convenience) it provides, a fake tree is a net loss.
A real tree, even though we kill it to decorate our homes, produces oxygen for the years (usually seven to 20 years) that it is growing, all while filtering the air and sucking in carbon dioxide. When Christmas is over, the real tree is chipped and recycled: into mulch for our gardens, or burned to produce energy. Sure a real tree costs you a few bucks every year, but it encourages tree farming and gives back to the planet in a way a fake tree never does.
Plus, you can’t beat the wonderfully fresh odour of pine in the living room.
This year, only my 13-year-old daughter went with me to pick the tree, and she picked a good one: six-feet high and nicely shaped (last year I had to get the tree-trimmer out in the living room to give the tree a proper haircut).
We were a bit disappointed that the 17-year-old wouldn’t take part in decorating the tree, but teenagers are a fickle lot. We know next year or the year after, he’ll be chomping at the bit to pitch in. Like my evolving relationship with real Christmas trees, a teenager’s POV is in a state of flux. He’ll come back around in good time. And we’ll be waiting for him when he does. I’m sure our daughter, in a few short years, will be full of yuletide scoff as well.
The Gentili family has a respectable collection of the kids’ handmade ornaments, as well as keepsake ornaments given as gifts by their aunt (Hi, Auntie Vi!) every year. Those decorations — both the child-forged and aunt-purchased varieties — are an awesome chronicle of the children’s interests and abilities over the years, and we are so grateful to her for them.
Those decorations tell the stories of Christmases past, and we get to relive and retell those stories every single year as we take them from their boxes and hang them from the branches of a new tree. Forget those esthetically pleasing but emotionally bereft store-bought decorations. They are as psychologically hollow as they are physically hollow.
Barbies and skateboarders and My Little Ponies and musical instruments; uncooked pasta, faded Bristol board, flaking paint and curled-finger handprint snowflakes — the decorations are my favourite part of our tree. If the tree itself is the book cover, the decorations are the stories and characters contained therein.
We never tire telling those stories or strolling through that memory garden every December. Those handmade decorations mean we can decorate the tree with our memories, instead of hollow balls and plastic tinsel.
The decorations are a reminder that as tough as life can be sometimes, the good times far outnumber the bad. In the act of decorating, we can relive those good times every year, refilling our well of goodwill for another trip around the sun.
Merry Christmas, folks.
Mark Gentili is the editor of Sudbury.com and Northern Life.
