What I Look for in a Christmas Tree

As we’ve all learned from Charlie Brown, what one finds attractive in a Christmas tree is nearly as subjective as what one finds attractive in a mate.  Growing up, my mother and I did not see eye-to-eye on this matter.  Every year I waged my campaign for colored lights.  I usually won, but only after forfeiting on the tinsel.  But if I had my way, we would have had the brightest, most flamboyant tree known to Santa.  Or as my mother would put it, just plain tacky.

Ever since I can remember, my family had a tradition of going to the Christmas store at the Colony Mill together and each picking out one new ornament.   This was my opportunity to be subversive let my creativity shine.  While each year my Mom would pick out something simple and rustic, I would search for the most outrageous ornament in stock.  One of the most memorable over the years was my pig head in a wreath.  I don’t think that it was intended to be ostensibly carniferous, but when you flipped it over it really did resemble something you’d find at the deli.  I also remember how much I worshiped my Grandpa Matt for sending an obese flying naked lady ornament in our family Christmas care package one year.  The first year, my mom tried to “forget to unpack it,” but of course I didn’t forget.  I never forgot. From then on her strategy was to find it first and hang it on the back of the tree, knowing that it was an understood taboo to move an ornament someone else had already hung.

Now, over a decade later, I find myself putting up our very first Christmas tree in our new home.   How it gets decorated is entirely up to me.  I could use flashing lights and tinsel, pink boas and glow sticks; I could theme it after a sports team or Spongebob or Barbie; I could just cover it in food.  But do you know what 26-year-old Johanna finds most beautiful in a tree?  Simplicity.  A tree decorated in nothing but white lights, baby’s breath, and strung cranberries.

For several days, I left the tree just like this, with beautifully simple decor and a burlap runner from our wedding recycled as a tree skirt.  As I finally unpacked the few ornaments that Courtney and I have collected during our short time as a family unit, what I noticed was this: my favorites are simple and rustic.

So at Christmas time I find myself torn between my deep-seated love of tradition and sentimentality, which as far as ornaments are concerned often comes hand-in-hand with tackiness, and the simple rustic style I find most aesthetically pleasing.  I love the memories that come along with a collection of ornaments that has taken years to build,  but this collection is inherently not going to be matching or simple.  While I expect that I too will eventually succumb to a child’s argument as to why Big Bird and the clown with ridiculous hat really deserve center stage on our tree, for now it looks like perhaps the apple didn’t fall so far from the tree after all.

Johanna