1998 december 08

decorating rituals

our first tree is twinkling away as i write this.

waking up yesterday from that terrible dream completely threw me and i forgot i was planning to write about our tiny little christmas tree. we had a wonderful time on saturday, scouting out various tree farms and tree lots and hardware stores and drugstores and groceries and roadside stands, searching and searching some more for the perfect tree.

you must understand that although i have a three bedroom condo, gene and i have managed to fill it almost to bursting. so, while we would both love a giant tree, we had to settle for something much smaller. it is bloody hard to find a beautiful christmas tree when you move down to the petite department; they tend to the charlie brown end of the spectrum, short and spare, needles falling off and huge blank spots. luckily, we found the most perfect three foot grand fir tree and it is now sitting pretty on top of a coffee table.

i have enough ornaments to decorate twelve three foot trees. i have been collecting them since i was a child and still get a new one every time i go on vacation. it is great fun to open the trunk each december and remember where i found each ornament and what i was doing when i bought it. not all the memories are good but they are all treasured in their own ways: the wooden tulip and blue ceramic angel from amsterdam, the silver stonehenge from, well, stonehenge, the red white and blue star from washington, dc, the bamboo animals from china, the monkey from cape town, i could go on for pages. what could not go on is all the ornaments on the tree.

i hate deciding which will hang and which will stay in their boxes. i feel incredibly cruel, as though they each had feelings and would be desolate at not being on display. i see a new christmas special playing in my head, the island of misfit ornaments, every time i choose one over another. if i don't hang the tiny handpainted angels my grandfather made, i feel guilty. if i don't hang the four or five ornaments that have made it all the way from my childhood, i feel guiltier. so sunday, i opened the trunk and began the business of deciding this year's theme; you can hide behind a theme, it makes the decisions about what will go and what will stay for you.

we went for blown glass, combined with the heritage ornaments [those from my childhood and others rescued from my grandmother's attic], accentuated with glow in the dark icicles and fruit picks. it was amazing how much i could get on the tree but it is absolutely gorgeous. a single strand of green minilights and a set of white fiber optic floweresque lights give it an understated glow and don't compete with the brilliant colors of the glass nutcrackers and walnuts and horns and santas. i need to find that instant camera so i can show you just how beautiful it is.

gene and i are trying not to look like a sappy hallmark commercial but we are both pleased as punch with ourselves, our new love, and our first tree. we have, however, managed to avoid buying an "our first christmas together" ornament. hopefully, our families will do the same.

some years i decorate the whole house, not just the tree, but not this year. instead i will just hang the two pictures that mean the most to me: a handmade christmas card from theodore that still makes me giggle, and a hand embroidered christmas tree scene from jubilee.

i will leave the framed christmas cards from years past, the pictures of various people's pets dressed as santa, the pile of children's christmas books, the christmas glasses, the christmas mugs, the christmas tablecloths, the santa soaps, the reindeer handtowels, and the light up rudolph in the trunk, to wait for another year.

no need to scare gene just when he is getting comfortable.

typing by the light of the tree, claire