Oh. You stupid Christmas tree.
A seasonal excerpt from The Minister's Wife
When The Minister’s Wife was acquired by Tyndale House, and I began the editing process, part of my work was adding four chapters. The team asked me to specifically write about Christmas and heaven. I remember those two new chapters especially. One sounded fun, the other kindof impossible, so that became the chapter on funerals. Funerals were as close as I could get to heaven.
The Christmas chapter was a lot more fun to write. Just last week I had the opportunity to read an excerpt for a “Christmas breakfast” crowd and it was fun to revisit. I share it with you now to hopefully encourage you that you are not alone if things are not perfect, but still good enough.
Here we go.
The first Christmas that I decorated the tree all by myself, without my children’s help, at first I felt surprised and betrayed. I couldn’t believe that no one wanted to help me,
Especially Holly. Who else can a mother count on if not her girl?
I felt sad the kids had moved past seeing this as a magical launch to Christmas, a sacred part of their own celebration. But they were busy in their own rooms doing something fun that day. Brent never really cared about decorating the tree and would do his best to avoid it. He carried out his annual duties of accompanying me to the tree lot; remarking on the height of the tree; tying it to the roof of our van; unloading it at home; forcing the boys to help him cut the trunk; wrestling it into the tree stand; going to buy a new tree stand because we had bought a cheap one the previous year and it had broken again; and watering the tree until he stopped caring and forgot.
Brent would appear again later in the season to toss the tree onto the side of the road for municipal pickup. This would happen the day after Epiphany, well into the first week of January. The tree itself had given up by then, shedding its needles by the fistful, forlorn in the corner of the room, a symbol of our stubbornness. We had stopped plugging the lights in, leery of fire and weary of Christmas. But waiting for Epiphany— the celebration of the wise men visiting Jesus and his parents— was our way, at Brent’s urging, of proclaiming that Christmas lasts longer than a day. “It’s an entire season!” he would say. The wise men mattered, but by then I couldn’t wait for it all to end.
So the day the kids declined to help me decorate, it dawned on me I could have a pretty tree that year. I could consider color and spacing. I wouldn’t have to sneak around after they had gone to bed and rearrange things, moving the giant Styrofoam snowmen heads from front and center to side and low. I thought of the pictures in magazines of trees with clustered decorations, elegant little trios of color-coordinated glass balls nestled together at the end of green branches. I could do that.
“It’s okay!” I shouted up the stairs in case anyone was about to change their mind and charge down. “It’s all good!” I took my time. I listened to Christmas carols and sang along. I unwrapped ornaments from their little tissue paper homes and laid them all out on the couch before I placed each one thoughtfully on the tree— mostly on the front as it turned out.
I awarded positions of prominence to the family heirloom pieces, those tiny glass balls from our respective childhoods, ideal for hanging together on the ends of branches in delicate little groups of three, as instructed and inspired by the people who know what they are doing. After an hour or so, I stood back to admire. I sighed with contentment at how lovely and sophisticated our tree looked.
Gorgeous.
A few peaceful seconds passed. Then my beautiful tree fainted forward and fell flat at my feet, spilling water and shattering glass balls. The kids heard the crash and came running.
I burst into tears. Brent appeared and asked, “What happened? Why are you crying?”
(The chapter continues in a “solving Christmas for the Stiller’s kind of way.” Not all was lost. Just a few decorations and some pride.)
Oh my. That would have been a shock. We gave up on real trees when our first born was 2. We had hunted and hunted in the freezing cold tree orchard. Nothing. Hubby, very frustrated said, we are leaving. Down to Sears we went. Our first fake tree looked like toilet brushes but once the lights and decorations were on, it was beautiful.
From then on it was a fake tree. Now we even leave the lights on. Easy to setup. I decorate. All is calm.
I must have read this in The Minister's Wife before, but I'd forgotten and loved it. My copy of TMW was passed on to two actual Minister Wives long ago, but I miss it as it's one of those books to be read and enjoyed again! Thank you for writing these extraordinary stories and bringing moments of enjoyment, poignancy and laughter to the rest of us. I had my own Christmas disaster when I was a very overworked young mother and live-in house parent for a large family of 12 people we supported at the time. (I remember my pastor father-in-law noticing I always fell asleep in church and telling me I had "a spiritual problem." ) I had stayed up very late carving the turkey for our big Christmas Tea the next day. I dropped the platter on the way out to the garage fridge and managed to retrieve almost all of the turkey unscathed, but then our cat jumped onto the tree, and down it came. :)