More Compassion for Charlie Brown

Christmas Tree Collage
(click to enlarge)

For the first time since leaving the land of the Frasier fir Christmas tree farms in the South, the Parker family headed out into the National Forest of the Pikes Peak region to hunt down the perfect tree. Now, this was quite an experience on Saturday for several reasons. To begin with, we learned a little-known fact: trees that grow in the wild do not naturally grow in the nice Christmas-tree shape we get-the-tree-at-a-store people are used to. They grow together, so they are all lopsided and have major holes in random places. Secondly, we did not listen to my friend Paige’s advice to leave the kids in the car while an adult goes hunting for the tree, then to come back for the kids for the chopping down part of the event. Instead, we novices tramped with everyone through the snow, forgetting the baby backpack and so lugging a twenty pound little person around, in circles, for way too long, before finally settling on a halfway decent tree just because the fun factor of the experience was about to bottom out. To make things even more memorable, Kelty was wearing slick cowboy boots instead of snow boots and kept falling every other minute, while Cade kept whacking everything that moved or didn’t move with a stick. We finally just picked one (and yes, Cassie did spy it first), and sawed that puppy down–all the while desperately clawing to hold just a shred of the Christmas Spirit. We got the tree home and decorated it, breaking several ornaments in the process between the cat and the over-helpful children. And when it was all said and done, we have a tree that ended up too tall to fit in the corner where it should have gone, wires from the lights that are impossible to hide because of the lack of branches, and an empty tree top, because the top branches aren’t even strong enough to hold our Christmas star.

But, hey, regardless of what Cassie, Matt, anyone else that visits, and I think about our ghetto tree, Cade came in from church today, sat on the couch, looked at the tree with the lights on, sighed and said, “Our Christmas tree is beautiful.” And I’ve noticed that Kelty gets mortally offended if she hears any of us say anything negative or joking about “her” tree. I reckon I should stop obsessing about what looks classy and enjoy Christmas a little more through the eyes of my kids. There will be plenty of years when I can have the Norman Rockwell holiday home, and only a few when I will have little hands that put ornaments on and off again, little eyes that light up when they see the twinkling lights, and little hearts that just can’t wait until Christmas.

Tagged as: funny, seasonal