Having more than one Christmas tree is becoming a tradition for many people. They’ll have one just for looks, another for the homemade (child-made) ornaments, and sometimes yet another dedicated to some sort of theme, like angels or snowmen or WVU. Not me, though. I’ve traditionally been a one-tree sort of gal.

Until this year. This year I have two.

Our main tree, the one you see when you walk through our door, it is pretty much your standard pine, decorated with your standard Popsicle stick stars, demented-looking gingerbread men, and candy cane reindeer with pipe cleaner antlers and googly eyes. And as tradition seems to demand, it sits slightly askew in its stand, the tree’s way of showing superiority over those who attempted to force it into submission. (You may slay me, but ’tis I who will have the last laugh!)

Our other holiday decorations tend to blend right along with the same country-antique-yard sale decor of the rest of our house. Wooden Santa. Quilted Angel. Adorable frolicking snowmen and ruddy-cheeked reindeer painstakingly painted by sweatshop workers a half-world away. The kinds of decorations guaranteed to give you the warm fuzzies so long as you don’t think too much. That’s what my house is like. Understated. Standard. Routine. A place where I don’t think too much.

But the lull of the ruddy reds and antique whites come to a screeching halt at the back of the house, when you reach Tree No. 2.

A 7-foot aluminum tree. Complete with rotating color wheel.

“It’s beautiful!” Celeste said when she first laid eyes upon it.

“Like something from another planet,” said Geoff, squinting as he shaded his eyes with one hand. “The Planet of Shiny Nightmares.”

It was the tree of my childhood. The only tree I knew from infancy until I was a teen. So to me, there’s nothing more natural looking than a silver broomstick trunk sprouting 78 perfectly symmetrical branches that look like lit sparklers.

As a child, I liked the tree because it seemed futuristic. Now, it seems quaintly simple, even a bit primitive. Garishly so. But I found that when I lay underneath it, looking up as the color wheel tints the branches red, blue, green then orange, it takes me back in a way that I long for. Much like the music from “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” or the sound of the Claymation Rudolph’s squeaking nose. This strange, shiny tree won’t be returning to my parents’ attic anytime soon.

Rediscovering the tree has prompted me to wonder which of our decorations my daughter will want when she someday has a home of her own. Nothing seemed particularly special, until recently.

Years ago, I bought a set of red and green painted wooden blocks with letters that spell out “Merry Christmas.” It’s a simple decoration, something I never gave much thought to before. I’d arrange the letters on top of the entertainment center, and there they’d stay until it was time to return to their box.

Except now we have Geoff, who has started his

own new tradition. Instead of being wished a Merry Christmas each time we walk in the room, he rearranges the blocks so we’re greeted with, “MY RAMS RETCH,” or (after turning one M upside-down) “IRS WAR CHEST” or “SIR RAW CHEST.”

Celeste was quick to get into the game, making “MY RICH RAMS” and “MARCH MISS TERRY.”

The whole country might be up in arms over the whole Happy Holidays debacle, but in our house, nothing says Merry Christmas quite like “MY ARMS ITCH.”

I suspect it’s likely to become the tradition that, along with my cherished silver tree, keeps going for years.

Geoff, Celeste and I went to a Christmas party in South Hills on Sunday afternoon. It was still early when we left, so we decided to stop by Cornucopia on Bridge Road. While there, Geoff noticed one of our tires was low, so we asked a passerby where the nearest gas station was. He directed us to an Exxon a short way up Bridge Road. It was a few minutes after five when we pulled onto their lot. Two employees, a man and a woman, were still there and the lights were still on, but when we explained we had a flat, the woman said, “He already turned the machines off.” We pleaded with them, but they wouldn’t budge. I wished the woman a “Merry Christmas” before heading back to our car.

We had to choose between calling a tow truck, putting on the donut wheel from the trunk or trying to limp along to the next station a mile or two away. Since we were all dressed up for the Christmas party we’d just attended — and because a tow would cost at least $75 — we gambled that the tire still had enough air to make it to the next station without damaging the rim. Well, we made it without damaging the rim, but it completely ruined the tire, which was less than a year old.

I don’t know if I’m just angry as I’m out $100 at a time when we don’t have it to spare, or because someone would do that at Christmas, during the “season of giving.” We didn’t look dangerous standing there in our Sunday best, next to our injured little Toyota hatchback. I wonder if we’d have been treated the same if we’d been standing next to a Lexus or a Jaguar. I can’t help but think it might’ve made a difference.

If someone isn’t motivated by the opportunity to be kind, to help someone in need, then what does motivate them? Is it greed? The possibility of getting a big tip? Or are they simply apathetic and firmly rooted in that ugly it’s-not-my-problem state of mind?

Scrooge lives. Bah, humbug.

My husband Geoff and I went to see King Kong last night. A real date. To a real, grown-up movie. We don’t get that chance very often.

At first, we considered taking Celeste with us, but then I watched her as she watched a Kong commercial on TV. She averted her eyes. I asked if she wanted to see that movie. She said, “Yes?” As a question. She seemed relieved when I told her she couldn’t.

It was an incredible movie. Yes, it was long, but I didn’t see anything they could’ve cut. Jack Black was perfectly cast in his role, and I didn’t see a single misstep all the way through. The relationship between girl and ape was even believable. The sets and special effects were incredible. Definitely one to see on the big screen.

We still haven’t made it to see The Chronicles of Narnia yet. Maybe over Christmas break. It looks a little intense, but we’ll probably take Celeste with us to that one. She’s at that age (8 1/2) where she’s starting to consider most kid movies dumb, but other movies are either inappropriate or over her head. She’s right at the edge. Lord of the Rings is still way too scary, but the Chronicles of Narnia should be all right. Depends on how she takes to Aslan.

“We can’t all be sunshine and puppy dogs all the time,” wrote Raging Red in response to my blog entry explaining why I’d taken a week off from writing my column. My explanation recounted how, after spending a few days typing in Gazette Charities Christmas Fund stories for our website–cases involving hardships and sadnesses most of us can’t even fathom–I developed a case of the blues so severe I felt incapable of writing something upbeat. So I skipped a week.

“Why not write something that’s not upbeat if you’re not feeling upbeat that week?” Raging Red asked.

Although I was loathe to admit it, RR was right. So determined was I to avoid writing anything that wasn’t upbeat during the holidays that I opted to simply not write at all. It’s the columnist’s equivalent to clamping hands over ears and repeating, “Nah-nah-nah-nah. I can’t hear you.”

So in answer to Raging Red’s challenge, here’s a sampling of what’s been on my mind.

I’ve been upset with those who hit the stores early and emptied the shelves of all the predicted “hot” gifts, then ransomed them back to desperate moms and dads through eBay and Classified ads. There’s something upsetting about those who deliberately set out to profit from a parent’s desire to make their child’s wish come true.

At the same time, though, I was seeing so many who were spending so much, determined to get their offspring every single thing their little hearts desired, even though other children right here in our area didn’t have adequate clothing or a warm place to sleep. I was feeling disheartened by what seemed like a season of excess and greed.

Luckily, it wasn’t long before I witnessed a balancing excess of generosity. A child raised to have such selfless compassion that he went through his toys and selected only the best to donate to others. Adults who agreed to forgo exchanging gifts with each other and donate to charity instead. Volunteers who missed Christmas parties and time with their families to help care for the needy.

There was some sunshine.

But it was soon clouded over by a few trips to the mall, where I became frustrated with the people who, upon entering a crowded parking building, would hold up traffic for ages to wait for a parking spot. Equally upsetting were those who would take several minutes to get in their car and back out of the spot, even though they knew people were waiting.

On top of that, upon each visit to store dressing rooms, I was finding them piled high with clothes that had been tried on, then tossed on the floor, hung inside out, or ruined with makeup. It began to feel as though consideration for others was a thing of the past.

Then I found myself standing in a long line behind a woman, already laden with bags, struggling to carry a large, awkward item. Those in front of her noticed, and not only did they agree to move her to the front, but a few also helped her carry her load to her car. Another time I watched a woman who, while waiting for her friend, rehung all the spilled clothes on a rack, then neatly refolded some sweaters. When I commented to her about it, she said, “I used to work retail. I know how badly the workers need cut a break about now.”

I still think Raging Red was right. I shouldn’t have hidden out to avoid writing something that wasn’t upbeat. And even though I’m still saddened by how far away Christmas has gotten from the reason we started celebrating the day to begin with, I can’t help trying to hunt out the sunshine and puppies.

Even if they can sometimes be so hard to find.

“I took Megan to the mall to see Santa,” my friend Nancy said. “She wasn’t scared at all. She hopped right up on his knee and after they chatted a bit, Santa asked what she wanted him to bring her for Christmas. Megan said, ‘I want a Barbie head.’”

Santa appeared startled and recoiled from 4-year-old Megan in an unnerved-looking, is-this-child-dangerous sort of way.

“You want just the head?” Santa asked.

Nancy quickly jumped in to explain that Megan was talking about one of the oversized Barbie heads that you can put makeup on and style their hair.

Santa, looking relieved, quickly rebounded. “Oh, yeah. Those,” he said. “My elves have been making lots of those heads this year.”

My daughter was also about 4 when she discovered Barbies, and her passion for collecting them was fervent (albeit short-lived). So for Christmas that year, her grandparents thought she’d be tickled with one of those big Barbie heads, even though Celeste had never seen one before.

On Christmas Eve, with the family all gathered around, Celeste excitedly ripped the paper from the top of the package, lifted the lid, grabbed a fistful of synthetic blonde hair and pulled it up out of the box.

And saw that it was just Barbie’s head.

She shrieked and dropped it like it was on fire. “Someone cut Barbie’s head off!”

Nothing we said could convince Celeste that the bodiless head was supposed to be that way, that it wasn’t evidence of grisly revenge taken against Barbie by a wronged mafia lord (or Ken). The head went back to the store.

By the time she was 6, Celeste had long abandoned Barbie in favor of the rather bizarre-looking Bratz, a line of dolls that, like my daughter, have a “passion for fashion.” Celeste was even more fanatical about collecting Bratz than she’d been with Barbies, but I was still surprised to find a Bratz head on her list of things she wanted that Christmas.

I bought the head, but since it didn’t come with a box, I was at a loss for how to wrap it. I wanted to avoid a recurrence of the severed head scene from two Christmases past. I decided it might be best to simply put a Santa hat on its head and stick it under the tree Christmas morning. When the day came, I tried it that way, but it seemed to be missing something. I added a fuzzy red scarf, wrapped loosely around the neck, then stepped back to appraise. The scarf looked like a puddle of blood.

I decided there was simply no way to make a gift head under a tree appear festive and fun. The best I could hope for was to achieve an effect only mildly disturbing.

Unfortunately, by that time I’d become so seduced by the hilarity of the beheaded Bratz in her pool of chintz blood that I just couldn’t undo it. At least not until I’d taken a picture or two.

It was right about then that my daughter awakened and, rubbing sleep from her eyes, stumbled into the room. She squinted at the tree. Blinked. Squinted. Cringed.

An expression of horror crept over her face, then she finally spoke.

“That red is totally the wrong color for her.”

So I’m sitting at my desk at home, working on my computer, with my cat Squirt snoozing peacefully on the chair beside me, when Murry sneaks up and . . .

cold dog nose meets warm cat butt.

“Hey!”

Heh heh heh.

I was having such a rough week last week that I asked if I could take a week off from the column to try to regroup. I was grateful they said it was ok.

In addition to my regular job, I handle the Gazette Charities Christmas Fund, so this time of year, I get a bit nutsy. Well, more than a bit. It gets overwhelming, not just from the many things that need to be done, but from the seemingly endless sad stories. After typing in a few dozen of these stories to go on our website, I was left with a pretty serious case of the blues. A widowed mother of four. A widowed father of two. A single mother with terminal cancer who won’t move into Hospice House because they can’t accommodate her 16-year-old mentally handicapped daughter. It was too much. There was just no way I could write something upbeat after being so thoroughly immersed. So I skipped a week. Sorry about that.