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I love a messy, nostalgic Christmas tree.
I’m talking multi-coloured string lights and mismatched ornaments. I’m talking garland made from shiny beads. I’m talking candy canes. I’m talking about all those popsicle-stick reindeer and cotton-ball snowmen you made for your parents in kindergarten that somehow mysteriously make it back to your house as an adult. I’m talking about a tree that is the diametric opposite of “curated.”
I’m not talking tinsel, though, because I have one strict tree-decorating rule, and here it is: it’s gross, so if you’re a reads-this-over-lunch person, consider this your fair warning to nope on out of this paragraph. OK. The rule is: once you’ve had to manually pull something out of your dog’s butt, that thing is over forever. It’s kind of like when you throw up a once-beloved food or beverage and it comes out your nose: it’s over forever. (RIP, root beer.)
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No shade to those of you who prefer a more polished look, with a cohesive colour palette and defined look, whether that’s department-store chic (organza ribbons and metallic baubles) or Scandinavian minimalism (wooden ornaments, in small amounts) or “corporate lobby” (relentlessly colour coordinated, as though repping a brand or sports franchise).
But the best thing about decorating a tree, to me, is unwrapping all the little memory-imbued treasures that have been gifted to me or picked up on travels or handed down. Ornaments from childhood, or pop culture ornaments that just remind me of childhood. I forget about all of them for 11 months of the year, and then they delight anew.
I share my messy, nostalgic tree with my husband, so obviously there are some compromise ornaments on there, too. Like the little flocked panda in a picnic basket from his childhood.
The Nightmare Bear ornament. (Jen Zoratti / Winnipeg Free Press)
Sounds cute, right? A panda in a picnic basket! Wrong. This bear looks haunted, like it has seen some stuff. Its eye colour is best described as “translucent” or “needs an exorcism.” The black spots around said devil’s eyes have faded considerably, making it look less like a panda bear and more like a polar bear that hasn’t slept in weeks. It has an odd, creepy smile. I’m not confident this nightmare bear is even an ornament. I hate it so much. It’s on the tree.
(Also, I will mention that we have an entirely Star Wars-themed tree in our basement. It is silver. Princess Leia is the angel on top, obviously.)
For the code-red holidays we’ve lived through, my tree was my lifeline to normal. When we couldn’t gather, when our usual traditions were watered down or obliterated completely, when we over-identified with Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas — especially the line “we’ll have to muddle through somehow” — a tree was the thing I could still have. I could still choose a balsam fir. I could still breathe in his spicy-fresh scent. I could wrap it in tiny, colourful lights. I could hang my ornaments — horrible bear included — and have a tiny, shiny sliver of normal.
It surprises me not at all that a small cottage industry of 2020 memory ornaments proliferated during that first year of the pandemic, many of them toilet-paper roll themed. A pandemic seems like a weird life event to want to mark with an ornament — quite unlike the first Christmasses and first houses (ours has the Frame People in it still) and what have you. But maybe we wanted a keepsake from this “unprecedented time,” a little memento that says, “Hey, we made it.”
This holiday season looks a little more like the ones we used to know, but not for everyone. December is a difficult month for many people, pandemic notwithstanding, a time when grief new and old is felt keenly through the absence at a table or, yes, an ornament on a tree. People are navigating loss and unease — holiday parties have made an awkward return — and I know many families are dealing with the COVID/RSV/flu triumvirate.
So, if you hang a shining star upon the highest bough, a thought to those who are still muddling through, somehow.
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