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The Holy Mess of a Christmas Tree

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I really don’t like messy things, and I have been a “neat freak” since I was a child. In college, Sunday night I’d vacuum and dust and sweep my dorm room, my roommate would laugh as I adamantly cleaned, determined not to start our week messy. I’m a perpetual tidier and dislike having too much stuff on my counters. I love to vacuum and sweep, and feel chaotic if a space is too messy. But there’s one mess that I insist on bringing into my home, year after year, and that is a beloved Christmas tree. 

I come from a family that has two real Christmas trees, because twinkle lights and the smell of pine are important and why not bring them into as many rooms as possible? So small wonder I’m like this. In all my years in DC my roommates knew I was going to walk to the local market and begin my bartering for a tree, and then would give them a call to help haul it home. Being car-less in DC leads to creativity and relying on helpful friends who will help you carry a tree. So three years of hauling a monstrosity of a tree into our monstrosity of a house. Then two more years of a short, squat little tree taking up prime real estate in our living room, but there was a boyfriend (now my husband) with a truck to help haul the trees. 

Now in a long distance marriage for the next few months, I thought about if I even should get a tree this year. I was always determined to make sure we had a tree in the past, but I had the excuse of roommates and that multiple people would get to enjoy it. “My family has two trees, I’ll see a tree when I’m home, do I really need to get one for myself? It’s just me, is it worth the trouble of doing this by myself?” 

Yes, it was, I drove myself in the red truck, paid for the long, skinny, and last tree at Whole Foods, in the back of the truck it went, hauled up stairs, and after some wrestling with the tree stand it stood up on its own. ……………………………..