Life Lessons From My Christmas Tree
“Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, You’ll ever be unchanging, a symbol of goodwill and love!”
My husband brings all the holiday cheer into our home.
He loves to set up the Christmas lights outside, each year we get a few more strands to decorate with. Our house is always outlined with lights.
We take a life threatening, oh, I mean, thrilling, trip up the mountain to the highest part and then park the truck, climb higher than the truck will take us, and find our Christmas tree. Then we drag it back down the mountain to the truck and bring our Christmas tree home. I could write books on those trips to get a tree. They are so terrifying. My husband absolutely loves it.
Once we get home with our tree, my husband cuts the tree to the right height, brings it in, gets it all set up and keeps it watered. I help decorate it and care for it afterwards, but I’m never the one to set it up, partly because I don’t want to and partly because my husband does! We then take the scraps from the tree and make garland and wreaths to fill our home. One year we even set up a tent in our driveway and had a full on wreath operation happening, with tables and heaters set up.
Fast forward to this year. It’s my son and I. I want my home to be full of that holiday cheer, but it doesn’t come as naturally to me as it does to my husband. My decorating skills are slim to none. So I set up some string lights inside where I could, but haven’t even attempted to do anything outside. I kept thinking about what we would do for a tree. Going to the mountains and getting a tree only costs $5, but it’s so much work! After taking trips to 3 different stores to see what my options were, I landed on a 3 foot tree from home depot that came in a stand.
I was thrilled. I put it in my car and had this vision in my head of making tea, listening to Christmas songs, and decorating the tree with my son while dinner would be cooking and filling our home with the aroma.
Snap back to reality-I got home and put the tree up, it was a little crooked, and had a tag on it that said to cut an inch off the bottom to keep the tree happy longer.
It was 3 and my son had just gotten up from a nap. I though to myself, okay, this will take 30 minutes max and then we can go to the beach for a little bit while the sun is still out, come home and then decorate this tree and fill our home with holiday cheer!
….to save a longer story than necessary, we didn’t go to the beach, and 3 hours later, I called Home Depot in tears about the tree.
Apparently when it comes in the stand-you DO NOT TAKE IT OUT OF THE STAND!
The tree was cut at the bottom to fit the stand. I spent about an hour and a half whittling away at the bottom of the tree, trying to get it to fit back in the stand. I found another tree stand and spent another hour and a half trying to get the tiny tree to fit in the big tree tree stand.
I spent three hours scolding my son to stop climbing on me and to stop standing in front of the saw I was currently using to cut the tree.
By the end of the night, my hands were covered in tree sap and dirt and we had frozen pizza for dinner.
I spent the rest of the night cleaning the pine needles that had fallen due to my attempts to set up the tree.
I’ll spare you the details-just know that it was unfortunate.
I will be returning my tree to Home Depot tomorrow and getting another tree that is still in the stand.
I waged a war on the Christmas Tree, but in the end, I realized I was the only one at war. The tree wasn’t fighting me, it was just standing still while I fought myself.
I finally called home depot at 6. That means 3 hours of precious time I could have had with my son was spent shoving him away so I could figure out how to put something up that in the end was for him anyways.
I didn’t want to quit. I wanted to get the tree up and decorate it.
I called my mom over to help hold the tree up while I put things around it to get it into another tree stand.
While I was waiting on my mom to arrive, I realized that by pushing forward and putting this tree up, I wasn’t proving anything. I was spending more time being frustrated with my son and this tree, and in the end, I knew I would be concerned about it toppling over and wouldn’t let my son near it. What kind of holiday joy is that!?
That was when I realized, I need to stop taking everything on. I need to simplify things.
I called Home Depot and they told me to bring the tree back and they would switch it out.
So there went 3 hours of my life that I’ll never get back.
But it’s only wasted if I don’t learn the lesson that was there.
It’s amazing what a tree can bring out of you.
In the end, it was never about the tree. It was about me making it work because my husband did it so seamlessly every year, AND he enjoyed it.
Here’s what that tree taught me
- You can find a teacher in anything around you-including a Christmas tree
- I am not my husband. It’s okay to get a store bought tree and then call that same store asking for help because you cannot get it up
- It’s okay to not do it all
- It’s okay to ask for help
- My reason for wanting the tree was the joy in putting it up with my son and showing him the traditions we do-in my obsession with getting it up, I showed my son that the tree was more important than his help or time. In the end, the tree never made it up.
- My Christmas is not going to look like it did with my husband, I should stop pushing myself to do the things that my husband did.
- Take a moment to step back. I called my mom to help hold the tree while I tried various other ways to get it to stand up. While I was waiting for her to arrive, was when I realized that by not giving up on this tree, I was giving up on my evening with my son and the joy we were supposed to have in putting this tree up. That was when I called Home Depot.
- Swallow your pride. I was embarrassed that I got a tree all set up and ready to go and I took it down, cut it, and couldn’t get it back. By not accepting this, I lost 3 hours and the possibility of an enjoyable evening.
- Check your intentions. Set limitations for yourself. If I had set a healthy time limit to how much time I was willing to offer to this tree, I would have stopped long before 3 hours and kept my peace. Instead, the time kept slipping away and all of my attempts were more like a half hearted tantrum because it should have fit back into the stand.
- Make a game plan. I wasn’t making wise decisions, I wasn’t making calculated moved. I was just jumping from one idea to another. One involving dental floss…no need to explain. If I would have just taken a moment to sit and consider how I could get this tree to work in our home, I could have figured something out. Instead, I frantically moved from one idea to the next, and none of them worked, and none of them were very intelligent. There is power in giving yourself a moment to step out of the situation and think.
I have realized that my house isn’t going to look like something from a magazine, or even like some of the homes of my friends that are so nicely decorated. As much as I want it to, it doesn’t come naturally to me. Instead of making all of these attempts to make my house Christmas-y (this hasn’t been my only failed decoration attempt, which might be why it was so emotionally charged) I could have asked a friend of mine that is good at stuff like this to come help me. It would have been much more enjoyable than the route I took.
I keep creating this vision of myself that does everything. Cooks, decorates, works, takes care of my son, writes letters, blogs, goes on hikes, etc.. Those things aren’t always realistic to do on my own. The thing is that there are people surrounding me that would love to help. I won’t let them though. For some reason, asking for help equates to failing in some dark place of my mind. That’s ridiculous. I’m drowning. I’m approaching burn out. It’s because I cannot do it all. This balancing act is falling apart. The weight is too heavy in some areas, and less heavy in others. Share the weight. Simplify. Leave the tree in the stand, don’t cut the bottom inch off. The tree will still be happy.
What lessons have you learned through this holiday season?
What holiday fails have you had that you can laugh at?