It’s that time of year again. I will search in vain for a real, live Christmas tree. And again I will discover that the only sellers are florists who are pricing their trees for corporate clients who have deeper wallets than mine.
As for artificial trees, I can’t find one I would want to use.
First, I won’t touch anything that comes “pre-lit.” Screw that. My tree is an expression of my (and as she’s gotten more comfortable with the idea of a Christmas tree, my wife’s) creativity. If we decide to do a tree all in red one year, we’ll do that — and promptly never do it again. Boy, that was a mistake.).
Dense, symmetrical trees that fold up don’t make the cut either. For an artificial tree, I want one where you place the branches individually into the trunk.
Why? Because real trees aren’t symmetrical, and if you play around with the sequencing of the branches, you can make an artificial tree look much more like a real one.
Also, another trend among artificial trees is “bushy, dense.” You can’t see into them, and mostly ornaments are simply being stuck, motionless, to the outside, instead of dangling. So your ornaments never catch light in new ways, never surprise you in how they reflect the light.
We do have an artificial tree. It’s about five feet tall, and it’s over a decade old. I often have people tell me that it looks real. The ends of the needles are flocked so it catches light in odd ways.
When I assemble it, I put most of the short branches at the back, which allows the tree to sit closer to the wall. I also assemble the tree differently every year, more out of a lack of a written plan than, well, a plan. The tree is unique every year.
I wish I’d bought two. The box it came in was generic, there’s no manufacturer listed. The store it came from is out of business.
So if I have a tree, why do I need another?
In a word, “Cats.” We rescue cats. We have a lot of cats.
I also have some ornaments that are family heirlooms. Some a lot older than me, one was bought specifically to mark my first Christmas. Others are irreplaceable not because of time, but distance, such as the handmade ones I bought in Namibia. We can not put those ornaments out on a tree that the cats can access. So our main room, or living room, which is where we decorate the most, gets a tree with either generic baubles or ornaments that have proven resilient (I hope i’m not jinxing myself).
Truly sentimental ornaments need to either remain boxed or be placed on a tree that the cats won’t have access to, such as in our bedroom. I need a tree. Unfortunately, I need a tree that suits me. And they don’t make those anymore.
Which leads to the inevitable question: Am I the killjoy?
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Originally I thought this post would be about how modern artificial trees are killing both creativity and sentimentality by making triangular, pre-lit, dense trees that dissuade you from having any personal emotional connection to the tree. Building it and decorating it each year is what makes it memorable, for me at least. Somehow a lot of that got lost in this post. C’est la vie, I guess.
I also feel that somewhere in here i should note that i live in Malaysia which is technically a Muslim country and in the tropics, both of which reduce the number of options for purchasing Christmas trees.