Christmas Past (part 1)---A Drunken Fly, Dueling Branches, and a Squeaky Church
We put up our Christmas tree this weekend as you can see in the picture above. Doing so brought back memories of putting up the tree at home with my family when I was a child. The following paragraphs relate some of those memories.
When I was a kid, the Christmas season began when my Dad went up in the attic above our garage and hauled down the big brown cardboard box that held the artificial Christmas tree. We assembled and put up that tree every year. He'd bring the box in to the living room where we had already moved the furniture around to make room for the tree. Mom always wanted the tree in front of the window so that the lights from it could be seen from outside.
We'd put the naked, green, wooden pole (that looked like a broom handle and that served as the tree trunk) into the tree stand and screwed it in tight. Then Dad would sort out the branches by size and by the colors painted on the stems.
Every year during this process one big, slow, old fly would emerge from the cardboard box and start buzzing in loops around the room like he was drunk or lost or both. We assumed that he had been hibernating in the branches, but I was always puzzled by the fact that there was just one and not more.
Dad handed the branches to us one by one and in order so we could stick the color coded wire stems of the branches into the corresponding holes on the trunk. Along the way to getting the branches into the tree trunk, my brother and I would invariably end up in a "sword fight duel" brandishing the branches as our weapons of choice. My sister, who was the oldest, refrained from participating in such silliness.
The top of the tree was all one piece that screwed into a hole in the top of the green pole trunk. We'd put all the extra little wiry circles of greenery (that looked like the heads off of toilet bowl brushes) around the parts of the pole that you could still see to cover it up. Down at the bottom of the tree, under the branches, there was a plastic fake wood piece which slid on to form the trunk. Nothing says Christmas tree quite like a piece of plastic painted to look like a tree trunk at the bottom of a green broom handle with green toilet bowl brush heads clinging to it!
Handling the artificial branches made my hands feel scratchy and dry. I didn't like it much then, and I still don't like it now. I was always glad when we got done assembling the boring, dark green, fake fir. I much preferred decorating it with all the colorful, sparkling ornaments to putting it together.
Once the tree was upright and completely assembled, next came the lights. That was my Dad's job. Mom always made a big fuss and stew about that. She didn't want us kids to mess with the lights. She was worried that we'd get electrocuted on them, or break the glass bulbs, or get the wires tangled, or maybe all of the above.
The bulbs were the big old-fashioned kind and were multi-colored. There were no strings of all-white lights on our tree and none of those little blinking, mini ones, either. Once Dad got the light strings wrapped around the tree, he hooked the final string at the top to the electric cord for the angel topper which made her light up as well.
With the lights all strung on and everything lit up, next came the first half of the ornaments. Generally, Dad would bow out for this part and take a seat on the couch to watch the rest of us. Mom would take over and be in charge then. She had bags of unbreakable ornaments that she would hand out to us kids to place on the branches. She untangled them and made sure they all had hooks. It was a big hodgepodge of both handmade and store bought ornaments that we used to adorn the tree.
There were some that I remember well that were the sought out favorites of us kids. One was a little gold saxophone that was covered in gold glitter. There were also some very colorful little iridescent painted birds perched on little metal clips that we all wanted to put on the tree. Another type of ornament we scrambled for was what I called the beehive ornaments. In my child's eyes, they looked like beehives, but they had multi-colored panes and were edged with silver.
After we kids finished putting on the unbreakable ornaments, Mom and Dad worked together to put the glass ornaments on the tree. These were very fragile and delicate. We kids weren't allowed to touch them for fear we would break them.
Once those were on, the last thing to do was to put the silver tinsel on the branches. I didn't like doing the tinsel. It seemed to take forever. We were told to put each little strand on separately over the branches and to make sure they were hanging down straight so that they looked like icicles. The tinsel was always charged with static electricity and would stick to everything---our clothes, our hands, our hair, and the other tree ornaments. It was frustrating to try and put it on the tree.
My brother hated the tinsel task even more than I did. He quickly grew bored and tossed the glittery strands by handfuls onto the tree. Mom would get after him and tell him he couldn't put any more of it on the tree because he wasn't doing it right. This was just fine with my brother and perhaps his plan all along. Shortly after my brother was dismissed, I'd find an excuse to slip away from the tinsel chore too.
Mom and my sister would finish up the tinsel. Dad generally disappeared off to the garage to work or to the couch for a nap right after the glass ornaments were done. I guess he didn't care much for doing the tinsel either. When they finished with the tinsel, my Mom would wrap an old red blanket around the bottom of the tree using it as a makeshift tree skirt to cover up the metal stand.
The only other decorations, besides the tree, that I can remember having as a kid were our stockings that we hung from the mantle above the fireplace and a wind-up plastic music box church that lit up and played the song, "Silent Night."
The stockings we hung were our own, not fancy ones made from felt with our names embroidered on them, but ones we wore that we got from our dresser drawers. We always hung up a knee sock (back in the day of the knee sock!) in hopes it would hold more candy. We stuck them up with tacks into the wood of the mantle.
The plastic church stood about a foot high, and Mom put it in the same place every year on one of the end tables next to the couch. There was a light bulb inside of it which made the church glow when it was plugged in. It also had a wind-up music box inside it with a key to be turned on the back. When we wound the key, the music box played the song, "Silent Night."
The only problem was, after every three or four notes, it made a noise that can best be described as something between a squeak and a creak that sounded like "REEET." It became a tradition and a standing joke to wind up the church and sing along with it.
"Silent night, REEET, Holy night, REEET, All is calm, REEET, All is bright, REEET."
When we came to the "REEET" noise, we would widen our eyes, turn our heads at an odd angle, and make a silly face. We kids considered this great entertainment. Mom and Dad would just laugh, roll their eyes at us, and shake their heads.
