Christmas is from Hell

Sunday was the day we were going to do it. We'd been procrastinating, hemming and hawing, beating around the bush... but we were going to do it, we were going to decorate my mom's place for the Christmas season. My brother and I had squirmed and resisted, chanting refrains of anti-consumerism and de-colonization, but mom had been adamant: she really wanted a Christmas tree, and she wanted to decorate it together. As a family. Well, almost - my dad, the smart one, had already escaped to Barbados. But my brother, his partner, and I were required to be there.

So we'd bent and twisted all our schedules to create a window of time when my me, my mom, my brother, and his partner would all be free. That window was going to be Sunday afternoon.

I wrenched myself away from my selfish lifestyle and made sure I was there by 1 p.m. because I had been informed that if I arrived later, my mom would feel that she was unimportant, that she was merely "tacked on" as an afterthought at the end of someone's day. I didn't want to be responsible for that outcome, so I got there early, but not so early to seem conspicuous. Just early enough to seem eager. I got there at 12:30.

Right away I had a bad feeling. Mom told me the news: My brother wasn't coming. Neither was his girlfriend. Oh shit. I did not for a second bask in the knowledge that for once, I was the "good child"... I knew what this really meant. It meant I was going to have to do this alone. All the pressure of creating a loving family decorating afternoon with my mom was resting on me, and me alone! I needed to regroup! I needed to plan a strategy! I needed to escape to Barbados!

"Mom, I need a shower ok? Then we can start," was the only escape I could negotiate. I fought the urge to smoke up in the bathroom. Wouldn't that just ease the whole experience? I thought. Wouldn't that just help me stay calm if my mom starts to freak out? No. No. That sounds like a person with a substance abuse problem thinking. I don't want to be a person with a substance abuse problem. I will not use consciousness alterants to escape from my problems. I turn on the shower. I will just go back to China as quickly as possible. Or at least James Bay.

Do I have a travel abuse problem? My dad in Barbados... his grandfather who never came back after ostensibly going to buy some smokes... my brother on his way to Indonesia... my uncle who stayed in Fiji until his beard was down to his belly... half my twenties already spent in Red China? Does this addiction run in the family? Why do we always need to escape? And my poor mom, who wants the opposite, is surrounded by us and we're all she has in her life. Waves of guilt washed over me as I rinsed my hair.

I dried off and got dressed. I went out into the living room. We agonized over where to put the tree. Honestly, there is no room for a Christmas tree in my mom's living room, but we moved furniture until we MADE room.

The tree, which we'd bought the other day, was waiting out on the deck, where the recent spell of cold weather had frozen the sugar water in the hummingbird feeder. It turned out the tree was frozen into the bucket of water we had placed it in, too. So we had to boil water and pour it carefully around the frozen trunk and the frozen bucket until our tree could be freed from the ice. Of course, when the tree was freed, it was still covered in ice and snow, some of which had begun to melt and was dripping everywhere. I reached out and grabbed the tree's trunk about halfway up to prepare to carry it into the house... and came away with a handful of sap. This was not going to be pretty.

Mom and I arranged a pathway of towels to catch the drips as we carried the tree into the house. I can't overstress the importance of these towels. Mom's just had her floors redone and she's got some very expensive carpets that she does not want to see damaged.

The tree stand was already arranged where we wanted it and all we had to do was lower the trunk into the hole, towels in place to catch the drips.

It wouldn't go in.

The stand was too small! Should we buy another? No, this stand may be rusty, ugly, and old, but it'sa family heirloom. Mommy's great aunties used that stand. So no, no, let's get out a saw and SAW the knots off the trunk so that it's smaller and it will fit in this ugly defective too-small stand! Great idea.

Now let's stress about the sawdust on the towels! Let's fight about whether we should move the towels and vaccuum the floor right now this very second even though we're not done the decorating and there are going to be needles and crap all over the floor when we are done anyway so we might as well wait until the end and vaccuum up our whole mess in one go!

Uh-oh, now the trunk is uneven and when we put it in the stand it leans waaaay over to the left... not nice. Now let's FIGHT about how to straighten it! Yeah! This is fun! Why isn't my brother here? Do you want me to draw you a picture to explain why we have to actually lift the tree a bit and not just tighten the screws on the left? No? Then quit telling me you don't understand!

"Do you like this music?" I asked in disgust.
"These carols make me sick!" Mom retorted.
"Why don't you turn them off?"

So it was that after an hour of messing with the god damn tree, we decided to take a break from fighting with it for a while, and fought with each other instead! Yeah I am a selfish offspring! Yeah you are a manipulative parent! Fight! Fight! Fight!

Finally I went and made some soup. We settled down a bit and I asked mom to go get the box of decorations. We finally started having fun putting up the lights, unwrapping the antique ornaments, including the little santas my grandma has stolen from her dentist's office as a child... my favourite white plastic reindeer... those exquisite glass baubles...

And then it happened! Just as we were finally starting to enjoy mom's decorating afternoon (which was now 8:00 at night), we noticed something. Something wet on the ground. (Thank god the towels were still in place).

The stand was leaking!

Oh yeah, rusty antique Christmas tree stand juice was running down onto the expensive carpets!

We had to undecorate as quickly as possible, launch that fucking tree back out onto the deck, and throw out the flawed and past-its-prime tree stand. Then we had to carefully ("I said CAREFULLY!") pick up the towels and wipe up the mess and vaccuum and put the ornaments back in careful wrapping and place all the boxes back in the closet and move the furniture back into place. No tree, no decorations... everything as it was.

All that suffering, for nothing! But isn't that what Christmas is all about?

Can I go back to China now, please?

8 years ago, I had a Chinese Christmas experience that I still remember fondly. I was walking through anonymous Chinese crowds on my way to class when a young man's intent face suddenly came into focus. He strode purposefully toward me, calling out and smiling in English, "Happy Foreign Holiday!" I realized it was December 25th.

I thought then that the joy for me in that man's holiday greeting was that it reminded me of Christmas at home with my family. (Of course, China has changed really quickly and these days Christmas Fever over there is as sick as it is here in Victoria BC). Now I realize the true joy in that memory was just the fact that December 25th did not actually have to mean that much. Just a foreign holiday...

If only Christmas could always be that painless.