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An indoor tree
Dec. 3rd, 2011 06:44 pmIt was when I was driving home with a Balsam Fir in the passenger seat next to me that the absurdity of what we do for Christmas really dawned on me. Unlike many other jaded and bitter husks of people, I still love the part of it where you give something nice to friends and family - particularly as Whitney handles the vast majority of the thought process on my behalf these days, and because I'm now in a position to give out download codes to my own stuff as cheap-as-free presents for people I can't otherwise think of gifts for, giving myself the bonus of self-promotion. What I was thinking about, though, was the yearly tradition of taking a tree - something that is pretty much the ultimate symbol of something that is firmly and incontrovertibly outside - and tarting it up with an array of flashing trinkets and then inviting it in to come and live in your dining room.
I don't dislike it at all, just when put like that it seems an odd thing for anyone to do (though not as odd as it was when the practice was blossoming in Germany, when they decorated them with lit candles and I'm surprised that they had any houses that hadn't burnt to the ground by the new year). This year is going to be our first Christmas that we're doing ourselves, and so for the first time, we went out and brought back a genuine tree rather than using an artificial one. The whole practice was a lot easier than I had expected - a six and a half foot tall fir cost $40 with a coupon, and they're not even anywhere near as heavy as you'd reasonably expect - the screws in our tree stand, so clearly inadequate for holding up anything with a centre of gravity more than an inch off the ground, are keeping it perfectly vertical.
And therefore we have our own beautiful abomination of nature:
Another thing I haven't really got the idea of is stockings. I remember my own family didn't really do them for a long time, but that we started a tradition of leaving snow boots outside our bedroom doors (and I remember my brother telling me that it rather ruined the mystery of Christmas when he heard a thump and a "Damn it!" in my voice coming from the other side of the bedroom door when I was attempting to distribute some tangerines among them). When being responsible for filling a whole one, though, it becomes clear how much more difficult they make things. In previous years, when presenting gifts to close family, they've all had a feeling that I (or at least somebody, see above) have put actual thought and care into selecting them perfectly for the person who they're being given to. With the addition of stockings, the feeling is more of "Please accept these heartfelt gifts, and also this old sock full of miscellaneous gobshite" - a collection of filler such as compact shoe polishing kits and travel chess too microscopic to do anything with but lodge into your ears when the Christmas No. 1 comes on.
And with just two of us in the house, I'm not entirely clear how the Santa arrangement is going to work.
I don't dislike it at all, just when put like that it seems an odd thing for anyone to do (though not as odd as it was when the practice was blossoming in Germany, when they decorated them with lit candles and I'm surprised that they had any houses that hadn't burnt to the ground by the new year). This year is going to be our first Christmas that we're doing ourselves, and so for the first time, we went out and brought back a genuine tree rather than using an artificial one. The whole practice was a lot easier than I had expected - a six and a half foot tall fir cost $40 with a coupon, and they're not even anywhere near as heavy as you'd reasonably expect - the screws in our tree stand, so clearly inadequate for holding up anything with a centre of gravity more than an inch off the ground, are keeping it perfectly vertical.
And therefore we have our own beautiful abomination of nature:
Another thing I haven't really got the idea of is stockings. I remember my own family didn't really do them for a long time, but that we started a tradition of leaving snow boots outside our bedroom doors (and I remember my brother telling me that it rather ruined the mystery of Christmas when he heard a thump and a "Damn it!" in my voice coming from the other side of the bedroom door when I was attempting to distribute some tangerines among them). When being responsible for filling a whole one, though, it becomes clear how much more difficult they make things. In previous years, when presenting gifts to close family, they've all had a feeling that I (or at least somebody, see above) have put actual thought and care into selecting them perfectly for the person who they're being given to. With the addition of stockings, the feeling is more of "Please accept these heartfelt gifts, and also this old sock full of miscellaneous gobshite" - a collection of filler such as compact shoe polishing kits and travel chess too microscopic to do anything with but lodge into your ears when the Christmas No. 1 comes on.
And with just two of us in the house, I'm not entirely clear how the Santa arrangement is going to work.
