Oy Tannenbaum

I love Christmas.  Everything about it.  The carols, the weather, the gifts, the “good will toward men” spirit, the lights,  Amahl and The Night Visitors.  The whole nine gift-wrapped yards.

But most of all I love a Christmas tree.

As a kid I wasn’t allowed to have one.  My folks?  No way.  They definitely had a “them versus us” mentality so typical of their post-World War II time and place.

Me, on the other hand?  My best friend Barbara was a Scottish Presbyterian and I vicariously enjoyed Yuletide with her and her family every year.

(As a kid, I was always a little fuzzy on the “do we or don’t we?” philosophy anyway.  I clearly remember a time when I was positively relieved to find out that Jews were allowed to celebrate Thanksgiving- another religious, very Puritan holiday, it seemed to me.)

But each Noël season, as I gleefully sang “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “Silent Night” in seventh grade choir and made awful green and red Christmas cards in Miss Erst’s art class, I got into the gestalt of the whole season and I reveled in it.

But I never had a tree.

Until I grew up, got married, grew up some more, got divorced, got married again, and our kids were born.

Then I went to Tinseltown.

Of course I made some rookie mistakes that first year.

Like buying a tree who’s needles looked great and smelled piney but were lethal to the touch.  Especially on the dismount end- when everything had to be taken off and the tree tossed.  Ouch.

I soon learned to go for the soft-needled tree.  Much kinder on my manicure.

Belated Thank You Note Sidebar:  Throughout the many Christmas seasons en famille, I never ever succeeded in getting any assistance from the Ross clan on the takedown.  As excited as they were to help decorate, the kids always vanished into Aspen’s thin air when it came time for undoing what we had done.

I was always solo- except for the year that I broke everything skiing.  I wasn’t standing upright any more but my Christmas tree still was.  So now a much-overdue “thank you” goes out to the Lee and Zisook clan for the year you guys dismantled my tree.

I also didn’t realize that one has to buy ornaments.  Especially if one is first-generation festive.  I didn’t have any antique, glass hand-me-downs from Great Aunt Abigail or quaint, hand-made beauties from Grandmother Martha.  I didn’t have squat.  So off to Crate and Barrel I went.

I was in a hurry and bought for quantity more than for quality.  No theme.  Just a hurried “grab and go” method.

And that first year, my tree looked like it.

Awful.

Then Med Lange- my florist from the Crest of Fine Flowers- came to my rescue.

I had started giving a Christmas party on the Sunday after the Crystal Ball every other year.  (I wanted to give it every year but my then-husband wisely intervened.  He said that if we gave a party every year, people would come to expect it and get blasé.  I have to admit that he was right.)

Med made two major alterations to my Christmas tree scheme.

First he sent me a miniature boxwood tree that stood proudly on my round table in the foyer.  The other was to personalize and decorate the big tree in our living room with my all-time favorite thing- roses.  He covered a gorgeous tree in tiny gilt baskets crammed with teensy red tea rosebuds.

Oooh, swoon.  Now I got the idea.  When you’re artistically-challenged like me, always have a professional do it.

Long Ago Christmas Memory:  Nick had his own Christmas tree gaffe, too. When he was three, we took him to the kids’ holiday party at our club.  His eyes lit up at the sight of a giant tree covered in adorable gingerbread men.  And before I could grab him, he darted over, reached up and yanked.

Down came the entire tree.  With severed gingerbread heads rolling everywhere- more like Bastille day than Christmas- the other tots immediately set up an unearthly wail.

I was privately chastising him in a corner when the club manager came over.  “Now, Mrs. Ross,” he reminded me.  “Don’t be too hard on him.  Don’t forget.  He’s the member.”

(The next year, however, the gingerbread men were safely stowed in a basket on a table so that Nick couldn’t decapitate them again.)

When we moved the holiday out to Colorado, I was enraptured. Aspen has to be the most Christmassy place on earth.  The whole place is decorated by Mother Nature for the season- and she didn’t need any assistance from Med Lange.

Frosted with white, topped with twinkling stars, smelling deliciously of pine woods and roaring fireplaces, the town even comes equipped with sleigh rides and sleigh bells, hot chocolate and Santa’s reindeer.  (Ok, so it was an elk herd.  They were close enough for me.)

I was in winter wonderland Irving Berlin heaven.  For me, Christmas in Colorado was the pinnacle of holiday happiness.

And to be on the safe side, I had Judy- my decorator out there- do my first tree.  And what a bang-up job she did.

My very first Snowmass tree was pure cowboy- with sheriff tin star badges, little horses, tiny six-shooters, (sorry PC Police) cowboy boot ornaments, red bandana bows, turquoise bead swagging and tiny Italian lights to show off the whole John Wayne western picture.

Well, this year things are going to be different.  I’m going to celebrate my first Christmas back in Chicago in many years.

But with no kids to help decorate the tree.

I could get all choked up about this or…

I hereby invite all of you to a tree-trimming.  I’ve got my box of Colorado cowboy ornaments out, I’ve located the tree stand, and a blue Douglas spruce is on its way.

Let me know if you can make it.

The hot chocolate’s on me.

Christmas Tree Eleventh Hour Update:  Nick has just told me that he and his wife, Missy, are sending me a miniature boxwood tree from the Crest.  Just like the ones I used to know.

Thanks, you two.  It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

Merry, merry dear readers.

And God bless us everyone.