The Family Tree - By Sharon Flood Kasenberg

The Family Tree

Designer trees are lovely,
but belong in banks and malls.
No one ought to quibble with
my approach to decking halls.
Fancy trees may be admired,
but of meaning they're devoid -
in their quest for tastefulness
all sentiment is destroyed.
They have got no tales to tell,
no history to reveal -
those colour coded baubles
hold no symbolism real.
No amateur hands touched them,
no element is misplaced;
everything coordinates
and must be precisely spaced.
My ornaments have stories -
rich memories they carry -
they don't look picture perfect,
their styles and colours vary.
My tree is a family tree,
and I think it's wacky
that my bits of Christmas past
are seen by some as tacky.
I don't aim for showmanship,
or to with tree bedazzle -
that's too much cost and effort
spent making my nerves frazzle!
Christmas is a holiday
we enjoy as family.
We turn on Christmas carols
and together trim the tree.
Our tree is never perfect,
but its mish-mash makes us smile,
and being joyful matters
more than proving we have style.

Sharon Flood Kasenberg, Dec. 1st, 2007

Last weekend I heard a phrase uttered that always makes me feel sad.

"I don't let my kids touch the tree", said a young mother. "I do all of my Christmas decorating while they're at school."

I was  in a neighbouring town, attending a tour of homes decorated for Christmas. I'll concede that to a lot of people attending the event, achieving perfect Christmas decor is probably an important part of the holiday season. (I was far more interested in visiting some nice old houses.)

Still, although I've heard that sentiment before, it never ceases to sadden me. I can't help but pity the poor little tykes who will never contribute to the family Christmas tree. I walked through all of those perfectly decorated homes last weekend without feeling the slightest twinge of envy. Every tree I saw looked the same - professionally decorated according to the most current design trends - and completely devoid of anything personal. No small children hung any of those perfectly placed ornaments, and no school projects hand crafted by an excited five, seven or ten year old graced those branches.

My approach to Christmas decorating is the complete opposite. My sons always helped me trim the tree - or trees. Popsicle stick reindeer and button covered, spray painted styrofoam balls held a place of honour. (Some have survived long enough that decades later they're still on the tree.) The reindeer they cut out with a jigsaw in Cub Scouts still get displayed.

Oh, I'll admit that I gave them a few rudimentary design tips along the way, things like spacing things out so that there isn't a big clump of ornamentation in one spot and bare branches in other places. They learned to try and evenly distribute balls of different colours, to put smaller ornaments closer to the top of the tree (so that it doesn't look top-heavy), and to put the sturdier ornaments near the bottom so that if children visit there's less worry about things getting broken. Otherwise, I'd just let them do their thing, and if a few items were really badly placed I'd move them - a bit - after the fact.

I've always loved the tradition of decorating the trees together as a family. We listen to Christmas carols and make a night of it. The ornaments we hang remind us of Christmases past - the foil balls we bought when the boys were toddlers, the ornaments the boys made, the bits Todd and I each inherited from our parents - they all mean something to us.

One year I made a whole bunch stars out of sparkly pipe cleaners. I'd heard a friend say he had no ornaments for his Christmas tree, so I bought the pipe cleaners at the dollar store and played with them until I came up with the idea of making little stars that could be placed directly on the tree. They appealed to my sense of whimsy, so I made some for our tree too. Then the boys got playing with those pipe-cleaners and decided this Beatle-loving family needed a few glittery gold submarines to hang on the tree. Why not? They still get hung, and remind us of the goofiness that we enjoy as a family.

Another family tradition we have is covering our windows with honest-to-goodness six-sided, hand cut snowflakes. I first did this when my sons were two and three, because it was cheap and cheerful decor. The boys loved those snowflakes and begged for them every year after. When they were six or seven they learned how to cut them out themselves, and many of the flakes on my front window were cut by Sam and Dan. (Some survive from year to year, and every year a few new ones are made.)

The "big tree" we decorate has a history of its own. It's the only artificial tree that my parents ever owned - purchased the year I left home. It's getting pretty old now, and sheds almost as much as a real tree would. Next Christmas we hope to put up a new tree - a bigger one that's more befitting of the ten foot ceilings in our new/old house. I'm sure we'll acquire a few new ornaments to go on it too, and when we do it's likely our tree will look slightly more coordinated than it presently does. But I don't aspire to a perfectly designed tree.

No - I like my family tree in all of its glorious imperfection. I like the memories it holds and the conversations it starts. I like knowing that my parents and grandparents touched some of what adorns it, and that my sons have left their mark. I like anticipating the day a grandchild or two will give me some precious effort and proudly say, "I made this for you, Grandma!" Surely when that day comes I'll hang the offering proudly on my tree.

My tree will never look perfect - I'm absolutely convinced of that. But somehow every year it feels perfect - and that matters a lot more to me than displaying a work of art.