It is my belief that the demise of many American marriages starts with the selection of the Christmas tree.First, couples and families argue over whether to buy artificial or real. Either way, the choices continue.Artificial tree sections in retail stores consume tons of space and offer a wide variety – short, tall, fat, skinny, with lights, with fiber optics. I wouldn’t be surprised if some actually play carols.If going with a real tree, the decision has to be made as to if you cut one down or go to the store and pick one out. Both choices are going to be chilly and require gloves.Regardless of which direction you head, the event will usually cause someone to lose patience, young children to lose interest and the tree hasn’t even been stuffed into the back of the car.Once it gets home, that is when the real "fun" begins.Before I continue, I should say that picking out the Christmas tree and subsequent decorating are my favorite part of the holiday season. I love Christmas trees. If I had my way, they would stay up until Valentine’s Day.Unfortunately, in my family the hunt for the tree was never an easy task.As a child, we always had a fresh-cut tree. My mother would stay home decorating the house while my father piled all of us children into the van and headed for the nearest tree farm.My other siblings didn’t always share the love my father and I had for the hunt. They would get cold and bored and want to just pick a tree and go.My philosophy was different. I was sure there was one perfect tree somewhere out in the field, and my Daddy and I were going to find it. Of course, by the time I would find one and permit my father to crawl underneath to chop it down, we were all chilled to the bone. The poor man — he really tolerated us as children. I am sure these moments were not among our best behaved, but he always showed us great respect and smiled a lot.Once the tree was brought home, my mother would get a chance to react. No matter how hard we tried, I don’t think we ever managed to get a symmetrical tree, and usually it would be too big for the house.This forced my father to spend more time out in the wind, snow and inhumane temperatures "trimming the tree" to fit in our house.Once the tree was in the stand, the family, especially my sister and mother, would have a small fit. It was no longer the perfect tree – now it was this bush-like thing we had brought home that was ruining the beautiful Christmas wonderland my mother had created.When one of my younger brothers, Johnny, approached puberty, he developed several allergies. This was just the excuse my mother had been waiting for. No more real trees because they make poor Johnny sneeze and his eyes water.So out went my father’s tradition.Instead, he spends about two hours matching up the color coded branches of our family’s fake tree. Woo-hoo!Fast forwarding to my adult life with my husband, David … we get real trees. Moreover, I promise the day we go to get them ends with feelings of joy and accomplishment, but the process is a bit hairy.I do not have the patience of my father, so when things start to go badly, I get crabby.We never argue over which tree to get, he usually lets me choose. Somehow, even after years of follies, I still manage to get a tree that is too big and we don’t ever notice this fact until it is already in the house.So we get our one little saw and start taking the inches off. In the past, this process has led to the bottom of the tree being uneven, causing the tree to be tilted when it gets in the stand.About now is the time I really test my husband’s love for me. This is my special thing, yet I start to feel defeated and think it will never look pretty.However, like my father, he grins and moments later has solved the problem – the first of our Christmas miracles.Now the lights come out, another area open for "discussion" in families. Which lights do you hang — colored, white, big, small? And do they blink? Much of which doesn’t matter because half of the strands don’t work.After my father placed the lights on the tree, my siblings and I would begin the race to hang up ornaments. Somehow, each one was special to each of us. This would lead to fighting, fighting usually caught on video tape.In the end, we would all stand around the tree, listening to Christmas carols, agreeing that this was the most beautiful tree in the world.It surprises me that my parents and my husband tolerate all of this year after year.This year my husband found a way to avoid all the fussing and deciding. While I was at work, he picked out a flocked tree at Wally’s Nursery.When I arrived home, he took me to Wally’s and showed me the most perfect tree I have ever seen. It was small, the perfect shape, came in a stand and actually fit in both our car and our house.It was in our house and donned with lights in less than a few hours. It was a great Christmas gift.Maybe picking out the tree, lights and ornaments isn’t a fiasco for all families, but I would be willing to guess every family has something during the holidays that causes temperatures to rise. This year, try to exercise patience and toleration with one another.Chances are, the tensions are coming from a good place. In my house, it was just that everyone wanted the holiday to be perfect for everyone else.Well, this is not a holiday about perfection; it is about family and reflection. As long as you have those you love around you, the holiday will be great. Everything else is just icing on the cake. And really, for adults it is all about the cake.Merry Christmas Crescent readers! I hope you and your family have a fantastic holiday. I hope that you and your loved ones are healthy, travel safely and take the time to notice how precious this time of year really is.
