In just a few days, it will be Christmas. Hopefully, sometime before then, Doug and I will pull our 2' artificial tree out of its bag and drape it in the dozen or so ornaments we kept. We'll strew some lights in the dry stream out front, put out a "Have a Merry" lawn flag and call it good.
How far I have fallen from my roots.
I don't know why my mother loved Christmas so much. No matter how bleak our circumstances, how brutal the year had ben, somehow, when it came to Christmas, she was able to summon up the energy, the will, the grace to arrange a celebration -- and to decorate the absolute bedazzled, glittered heck out of the house.
Before Dad died, the Christmas decorations were elaborate and festive. He must have been a restraining influence on her. But not long after he died, Inez died, and Mom apparently decided to Choose Joy. And Abundance. Especially Abundance
Mom drove compact two-door sedans. In 1985, the year of the mammoth tree above, it would have been a red Chevy Monza -- think "Honey, who shrunk the Ford Fiesta?" She drove to a nursery at "the four corners," about halfway between Woodward and Perry, and generally chose the fattest tree that would fit under the 10' ceiling (the little house was very compact width-wise but had nice, high ceilings, the harder to heat, my dear). This was before tree farms began using compression netting. Mom and whomever she'd talked into helping would wrestle the bulk of the tree up on top of the tiny car -- the car and tree typically had approximately the same dimensions -- and then pass polypropylene rope around it and across the inside of the car.
Although it was good rope, and Mom drove slowly with flashers on, the tree usually ended up in a roadside ditch at least once during the journey and had to be bundled back on top and re-secured to go the rest of the way. Once home, it would take several people to wedge it through the 36" porch door. The bottom bit of the trunk was sawn off while still out on the porch and then the tree taken into the living room and put into a stand, which was filled with warm water. The plan was always to let the tree 'relax' in the warmth for a couple of hours, to allow the branches to 'come down,' but, almost invariably, what would happen was that, during the relaxing, the TREE would come down, toppling over and wallowing about for a bit. If it didn't happen before it was decorated, it happened at least once afterward; when complimented on her amazing trees, Mom would always protest, "oh, but you should have seen it before it fell over."
There's a meme going around just now: "Christmas decor isn't meant to be sleek and minimalist, it is supposed to look like joy threw up in your house." My mother called it "ungishing," as in "we're going to decorate tastefully and then unguish it up a bit." I never thought to question that... I assumed "unguish" was one of those obscure words that my parents and grandmother -- and eventually I -- used in everyday conversation. I had absolutely no idea all my classmates weren't getting the same immersive vocabulary experience, something that led to lifelong teasing not to mention noogies, wedgies and locker imprisonment... but I digress. In this case, it turns out "unguish" is, apparently, an entirely made-up word. Even the internet doesn't know about it, although they should, as it is perfect. And it definitely accurately described what happened at Mom's house.
Decorations were stored in the cellar so all the older ones had a bit of permanent 'eau de heating oil' fragrance, something I still associate with Christmas. Along with Mom's mid-century collection of brightly-colored mixed media figures of drummer boys, stable animals, angels and wise men, she had inherited my grandmother's collection of glass bulbs that had been given away free with a gasoline purchase. One box had a 'cost per mile' calculation inked on the top -- it was a fraction over two cents, as I recall. I loved those intricate ornaments, but my favorite were the aluminum "fluffies" made from slender wire in light blue, dark blue and silver. According to my father, these had been thrown out of planes as chaff to confuse enemy radar in wartime. Dad also made the prettiest wreaths. Once upon a time, you got a computer punch card with every bill in the mail and you sent the card back in with your check to ensure payment was credited to the proper account. Which leads me to wonder -- how did Dad have so many extra punch cards? Anyway, he took the A5-envelope-sized cards and folded back the corners on the short end to make a point then stapled these together in a series of concentric circles, spraying the whole affair with metallic paint and adding a bit of frivolity in the center. Apparently this wasn't an original idea -- here is one from the ICL Computer Museum:
Once the house was all unguished up, Mom started scheduling parties. She had parties for work friends, parties for neighborhood friends, parties for people with whom she'd gone to grade school. These featured great nibbles and decent booze, good music and So Many Candles. I don't know how we never burned the place down. When we were getting the house ready to sell, we washed the walls before repainting them and the color lightened by about 10 shades, yikes.
Christmas Eve was the absolute best. After Patrick went to bed, adults from across the neighborhood would gather and put together his toys from Santa, testing their entertainment value along the way. If there had been an official Red Ryder carbine action, 200 shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and a thing that tells time, I expect someone would have put their eye out.
Christmas day meant decadent breakfast, presents and a sumptuous dinner using the good dishes. It took a day or two to clear the debris away and then Mom would leave the tree and decorations up as long as she dared, given flammability concerns. She hated packing everything away, but loved to haunt the after-Christmas sales and added to her collection each year. I've written before about how the color pink is our family curse, and it was definitely well-represented in Mom's choices.
As soon as I had a house, I followed in Mom's footsteps with regard to decorations and decorating (and she did a fair amount of enabling). I had a lovely 12' tall artificial tree but one year, I stopped by a nursery and saw an absolutely enormous fir languishing in the tree corral, all by itself. I told the clerk I wanted to buy it and he said, "No you don't." I assured him I did, and he assured me I didn't. "You will never get it in your house," he said. I snorted -- I hadn't been raised by some amateur! It fit just fine, thank you very much. Mom loved it.
When she died, Patrick was living in a small condo, so the three dozen totes of ornaments came to my house. He took the ones that were special to him, and that left me with approximately 100 square feet of Christmas decor to store. Not long after, someone made the terrible mistake of posting on Craig's List that they were looking for some decorations to cheer up a family who had been through some hard times, did anyone have any to spare? I met the poster in a mall parking lot and they stood there, dumbstruck, as I kept pulling box after tote after bag out of the minivan. When they left, their SUV was bulging at the seams, and each child was holding a big sack, long strands of plastic beads, glittery roses, gold feathers and crystal bells spilling out onto their laps.
I hope they liked pink.
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