Oh Christmas Tree

In every relationship there are always some events that make you wonder about the person with whom you are involved. Sometimes they are incidents as simple as watching him wear socks with sandals in public for the first time, seeing him eat pizza covered in Russian dressing, or noticing how he avoids stepping on a crack in fear of breaking his mother’s back. Maybe he made a fat joke in the presence of your not so svelte aunt. Not only do we question this other person, but also we question ourselves and what it was about us that attracts a man who has so little fashion sense or relies on elementary traditions to determine the course of fate. Well, in the onset of my relationship with the man who would become my husband (believe it or not), I stumbled upon my own relationship conundrum.

To truly understand the succeeding occurrence, it is important to get a real feel for my husband. First of all, he graduated from a well-respected liberal arts college and got his master’s degree from a terrific university, so he’s no dope, at least academically speaking. In addition, he played football throughout high school and college and coached both football and lacrosse for several years after. Let’s just say, he is not a small, unassuming individual. He has the build of a football lineman: six feet tall, broad shoulders and a bit of extra weight around the middle, which we fondly refer to as additional abdominal muscle. He is loud, boisterous, and the center of every event from my own family’s Thanksgiving dinner to trivia night at the local bar. Up until the following event occurred, I had only seen the fun, macho guy mentioned above; the guy who owned at least 15 t-shirts from Goodwill and referred to the ones without holes as his nice ones. This was the man whose only apartment decorations were a collection of fancy beer bottles, such as Miller Lite and Budweiser. Then, we got our first Christmas tree after almost a year of dating and my entire view of him began to change, sort of.

I grew up Jewish in a very Jewish community. As a result, I had only seen Christmas trees from afar, by that I mean, driving down the highway that led out of our little Hebrew hamlet. However, I had always admired the beauty and symbolism of the festive season that they conveyed. We even had a Hanukkah bush one year; a sad little piece of flora with thin branches and leaves and tiny blue lights, but it didn’t quite give you the same sentimental feeling. It wasn’t even in the fir family, so I don’t know whom we thought we were fooling. It kind of stared blankly back at you as if to say, do you really think this is a good idea?

Therefore, when I started dating my husband, who grew up with a strong Catholic background, I was excited to get a tree together. As a teacher in a southern city, my students brought me ornaments each year for the holidays, even those of them that knew that I was Jewish. I soon learned that many children in the south assume that every religion has a tree from Hindu to Jewish and there wasn’t much sense in persuading them otherwise. As a result, I had amassed a small collection of apples and schoolhouses on thin loops of string that longed for a place to be displayed and I had sadly let them down for years. Now, I could finally, proudly display my limited ornament collection the way that it was meant to be.

Before beginning to assemble our Christmas icon, I had no idea that my husband knew anything about Christmas tree decorating let alone would actually prove himself to be quite an expert at it. Clearly, there were many sides to this man and I had only observed stereotypical guy exterior. I was about to be very surprised by what I discovered lurking underneath.

Soon after we picked our tree from the Booger Mountain, no joke, tree sellers, I realized that this was no slap on the ornaments and the tacky colored lights production.

First, he insisted that we go to Michael’s craft store. My hulking, former-football player boyfriend carefully perused each and every aisle in search of the perfect style and size of silvery ribbon with gold trim. I’d previously only seen this level of attention devoted to his fantasy football picks. I thought I must in a parallel universe. Next it was on to Target for matching ornaments, all in gleaming shades of red, silver, and gold. Only white lights for him, and the ribbon had to be laid around each level of pine branches just so. While I ordinarily would have questioned his sexual orientation as I watched his beefy hands daintily hang ribbon and coordinated ornaments, I’ll admit, I actually was quite impressed. For a man who couldn’t pick up his socks and believed that the kitchen fairy came to put his plates in the dishwasher, to see this level of care and consideration for his Christmas tree was endearing. I started to look at him in a whole new light.

We sweetly put our wrapped presents underneath the pine branches, as any young couple would do. We watched TV with all of the lights turned off and with just the twinkling of the Christmas tree to light up the room. In spite of my very Jewish aunt’s recrimination, “You’d better not get a Christmas tree,” I was delighted with my inaugural one. It was not like we went to mass or I started taking communion, I simply enjoyed the splendor and beauty of my first real tree. Sorry mom.

Eventually the Christmas season came and went. Then, so did New Year’s. Then, so did the Super Bowl. But what did not leave was the Christmas tree. Since it wasn’t in my apartment, I really had no say as to the departure date of our slowly withering holiday symbol. I did speculate a few times, that perhaps it was time to bid adieu to our Christmas friend, but my husband-to-be (HTB) just kept insisting that he would do it soon. As we neared Valentine’s Day, even he realized that enough was enough. However, now the concern became, “What will the neighbors think as they see me taking my Christmas tree out this late in the year?” All of a sudden, my gregarious, I–only-have-one–volume-and-it’s-not-quiet boyfriend became embarrassed about what people would think of him. So, the Christmas tree continued to drop its once bright green needles into a pile of growing brown strands on to the floor of his apartment.

Several days later, I got a phone call from my HTB. He had an issue; his garbage disposal was broken. Let’s just say this was not his first run in with a kitchen appliance, so this didn’t completely surprise me. My logical question was, “What did you do now?” However, the response I received over the phone that day was far from logical or even within the range of common sensical.

“I was trying to get rid of my Christmas tree,” he replied, as if that explained everything. Immediately the image of our seven-foot spruce protruding out of the tiny black abyss of a garbage disposal in the middle of his kitchen sink popped into my head. “It’s not a wood chipper!” I vehemently shouted at him over the phone. “Are you crazy?” I knew at that moment that while my htb had amazed me with the mirage of his impeccable attention to detail when decorating our beloved tree, this was the man that I was actually dating.

Not only had he attempted to dismember our seemingly perennial pine tree in the gaping jaws of the disposal, but also he had discovered the limitations of an overused, decrepit apartment appliance far too late. I quickly drove over to assess the damage and try and determine an appropriate course of action that wouldn’t result in his getting evicted.

As I opened the door to his apartment, the overwhelming scent of pine nearly knocked me back out the door. It was as if he had been manufacturing Pinesol inside his tiny abode without the benefit of fans or ventilation. Water was now oozing both out of his overflowing sink and the dishwasher. Yes, he had tried to rinse the pine pieces down the disposal only to have the pipes clog and burp pine needles and tiny wood chips.

He didn’t know what to do; I think he truly believed that this would solve his out-dated Christmas tree issue. The look on his face was pure devastation and confusion. I told him that he had to call his landlord, but he did not want that man to think he was nuts. Too late for that, I thought to myself.

After much convincing, he agreed to call the landlord but refused to be in the house when the repairman arrived. I can only imagine what that man thought when he entered the empty apartment to that aroma and the scene that awaited him in the kitchen.

That was the final straw. Later that evening my husband-to-be skulked out in the middle of the night, leaving a trail of dead, crunchy pine needles in his wake, to take the Christmas tree to its final resting place beside the garbage dump.

You would have thought this experience would have served as a red flag warning me about what I was getting into. The first blip on the radar, so to speak. And though the mirage of this man who was so meticulous and circumspect about one aspect of life, the Christmas tree, evaporated when faced with trials of everyday existence, I realized that having him around would only make life that much more interesting and invite more unexpected and amusing experiences into my world than I ever could have imagined. That is why, in spite of his limited Christmas tree logic, we got another festive fir the very next year, although this time, we managed to get it out of the house sometime before the Super Bowl.