When Everything Old Is New Again
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.
