Moving Christmas Trees at Midnight
When your holiday isn’t Instagram-worthy, but you want it to be…
Do you gaze at the incredibly beautiful images on social media, thinking you can recreate a holiday home that’s even more incredible than anything in a magazine spread? Well I do, and life felt easier when magazines were the only yardstick by which we were measured. Those glossy pages spoke of perfectly basted turkeys (I didn’t know the turkey was cold and glistened under glossy paint), a sumptuous homemade garland crafted by the greens from the owner’s own shrubs and trees, and how was I ever to manage making the sixty puddings Martha Stewart put away before the days grew dark and cold?
Now it seems as if our homes simply must gleam with a Christmas tree lit with one hundred lights for every foot, and the ornaments are designed around a theme of blue and white to match the room, with paperwhites blooming all over the house, along with the beautifully wrapped gifts using silk ribbon and paper to match that blue theme.
By the time I’m done scrolling through all the images, which start debuting promptly on November 1st, I’m overawed and overwhelmed. I host Thanksgiving every year, and who wants to eat that dinner next to a Christmas tree and nativity scene? Nobody! Well, I don’t, but maybe I’m a Christmas freak. I don’t want to hear a Christmas carol until the turkey and pumpkin pie leftovers have been consumed or tossed, because after day two of leftovers most of us are so over it.
On Black Friday when people flock to stores or online to score wonderful Christmas gifts, I go to my Christmas storage area and begin. Did I mention the seven trees I currently own? Full size monstrosities, too. My mother swooped in one summer day years ago with a U-Haul filled with her Christmas trees, ornaments, angels and Santas. She gifted me with a village scene straight out of Norman Rockwell’s village, too. What was I to do with such largesse? I didn’t ask for this bountiful blessing that filled my garage, and my husband’s face when he saw the space filled with Christmas showed the horror I felt.
That year I decorated our home with every little bit my mother had given us, and my kids were creeped out by what they called the “head tree”. I had a whole 8 foot tree full of Santa heads complete with real fur beards, and they hated it. I don’t have the heads anymore, but I’ve been waiting to pass down all this Christmas bliss and my kids tell me, “no”. I must be a Christmas pushover, doomed to hold every scrap of decoration from my in-laws and my mother. I didn’t even mention the church sized nativity scene that is an actual antique and huge. I didn’t know babies could be that large, as in Baby Jesus.
Back to Friday. I began by placing jingle bells on all doors, and my family hates them. I know when someone is using the bathroom by the certain jingle, or when anyone sneaks out through the garage. This year was different, because my partner in decorating crime is living with his roommate and spends lots of time with his fiancé, and my husband did not go hunting. He lugged out the trees with far less enthusiasm than my son.
Did I mention that I forgot to write where all the trees go in the new house we’re in? I hastily directed my husband to locations, and we assembled the trees. He headed to bed, while I stayed up to read and stare at the tree in the family room. It looked wrong, and I hated the box my hubby placed underneath it to make it look taller in the room with the higher ceilings. I measured it, and decided to move it to the dining room.
Yes, I have a tree in there. Moving full size Christmas trees all assembled isn’t as easy as I thought it would be, and the scratching noises that screeched down the long hallway leading to the front of the house worried me, yet still I kept going. I couldn’t leave a tree stuck sideways in a hallway, could I? Then I took the taller tree and moved it upstairs to the sports room.
It was midnight on Friday, and all through the house not a creature was stirring while I thumped the tree step by laborious step upstairs. The cord made plenty of thunks, too, and I wondered when my husband would appear. He must have known better and remained in bed, but there is no way he slept through the clatter of me moving a mammoth tree upstairs and down a hallway. Then I promptly purchased an 8 foot tree with lights, and that’s a whole thing for another time.
With the main trees all in position on Sunday morning, I began my decorating in earnest, except I woke up with a shooting pain down my back and into my toes Sunday night. It seems that my midnight tree movements weren’t a good idea after all, and now I’m sitting on the couch with a heating pad as my best friend. I can’t bend or swivel, so my bare Christmas trees look at me with forlorn branches begging for even a Santa head or two.
I’m told I’ll be fine by next week if I’m good and don’t do anything. I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to have time to laze my way through December, since I’m usually in a flurry of action. I’ve been online shopping, though, and my closets are a bit too full. I can’t get any clothes out of one anymore, and it will be Christmas Day before I can see my shirts again.
It’s all good. I’m in sweats, watching Hallmark movies, buying 1940s Christmas cards off ebay, and reading my pile of books. Did I mention I’m heading to see my mom and dad in mid-December with my daughter? No? Well, I’m a bit worried that I won’t be done decorating for Christmas until Christmas Eve, especially since my newest tree is lost in transit. I’ll just read those glossy magazines about what cookies to bake with my daughter this year.
Who are these people who intricately frost and decorate a simple sugar cookie? Why can’t we have cookies with a smidge of frosting, and no idea what it’s supposed to actually look like? Is it Santa or a reindeer? Who cares?! Except I’m starting to think I need to up my baking game. I’ve been buying special sugar and rolling pins with designs on them.
The only lesson I’ve learned is not to move trees at night by myself. I still dream of snowy Christmas Eve’s with the house perfectly flocked and glittering, but I know it comes down to being with family and eating chocolates for breakfast with my coffee, laughing over mimosas, and playing games and losing at them. The lesson of Christmas is whatever I see online isn’t half as good as what I see when I look at my family. Smiles and love, joy and fun, and a big baby Jesus.
