What moving forward looks like

This holiday season just ended marks a major change for me. I decided to change what I do for Christmas decorations, to make it something that I specifically wanted. And, if I change my mind later, I’ll change all this, too.

Yesterday was Epiphany in the USA (in my time zone, it was the day before), and that was the day my mother took down the Christmas decorations, especially the tree. If it fell on a weekend, she’d pick a nearby weekday because I’d be at school. “No kid should have to see their Christmas taken down,” she told me at the time.

Ever since then, I’ve always taken down my decorations on or near Epiphany, just like she did. While I haven’t kept most of the other Christmas traditions I grew up with, that ‘s one I’ve always kept. However, some years it wasn’t necessary, because there were many years Nigel and I didn’t put up any decorations, and certainly no tree. When there have been some decorations, however, this is one tradition I’ve kept.

This year, however, I made a major change: I bought a new Christmas tree.

Over the past year, I began to feel I wanted a Christmas tree with ornaments again. It’s what I grew up with and had when I started my adult life. Nigel and I also used to have a fake tree that we put up and decorated with ornaments, but mice got into it and we threw it away, and we eventually replaced it with a minimalist gold tinsel tree. We last used that tree in 2016, at the second to last house we shared, something I talked about in a post last year, when I used the minimalist tree again (that post also lays out the history of the tree and has links to photos from earlier years).

My new-found desire for a “traditional” Christmas tree wasn’t about returning to old traditions, but, rather, making new ones. It was a sign that I wanted to move forward and do things differently.

I wanted a tree that has rigid plastic needles, rather the cellophane-like ones that are common on most fake trees. I’d had a fake tree like that in Chicago, and it was by far the most realistic type I’d ever seen (I bought it from the flatmate of a former boyfriend for some absurdly low amount, like $15).

As Christmas neared, I looked at online retailers, after discounting one from The Warehouse that was cheap, but also panned in reviews (for good reason) as being far too sparse. The ones I saw were the better part of $300, and even pushing $600 (for ones with lights). I decided to forget about it—there was no way I was going to spend that kind of money. And yet, I couldn’t forget about it.

I got an email from one company announcing their latest sale, and a tree I was interested in was on special ($90 off, I think it was). I ended up getting the “slim” version (because the space I have for it isn’t very large), but also 7 foot tall so it’d have some presence. I ordered the tree.

When it arrived a couple days later, I opened the box and saw the needles were exactly what I wanted, however, when I went to set it up later I noticed that the needles closer to the “trunk” were all of the cellophane-like kind, and I realised that’s why it was much less inexpensive (the daylight shot at the bottom of this post makes it easier to see the needle types). Next, it took me awhile to get the branches sufficiently spread out to look realistic, so it took me quite a few days to get it ready to decorate. I decided to get some sort of tinsel garland to mask some of the too-open gaps, but I didn’t.

Instead, I went to the local Farmers to get a tree topper because they, too, sent me an email about their sale. It turned out that everything—including their previously expensive trees—were around half the original price. Fortunately, so was the tree topper I wanted. And some LED lights I bought for the tree.

Even then, I didn’t start decorating the tree, and time passed. I decided to put the lights on, and while I knew they were all USB-powered, I hadn’t stopped to think that meant I had to find USB adapters. Fortunately, all Apple devises used to come with one (they don’t anymore), so I had a few. I snaked the lights on the tree—and still didn’t decorate it.

I planned to decorate it on Christmas Eve, but I ended up not feeling well, and didn’t. I decorated it on Christmas Day, mainly because I felt there was no point in decorating it any later than that when I planned to take it down on January 6. That didn’t exactly happen, either, but not for any particular reason.

So, Saturday the seventh—which, remember, was actually still January 6 in the place of my birth—became the day. That took me hours, mainly because of the lights being all tangled together and overlapping each other.

The lights! They were nice, though most of their settings involved flashing or pulsing (I had to push the button on it eight times to get to the “always on” setting). When I was looking for a tree, I saw several with lights as part of it, and I thought to myself, “who’d want that?!!” because I was remembering the old days of Italian lights, where if one light burned out the whole string would shut off. These days, such lights are all LED, of course, and if one burns out, it has no effect on the others—though they take forever to actually burn out. If I hadn’t been so out of touch on Christmas lights, I probably would’ve bought a tree with lights.

Still, despite my clear rustiness with using and decorating such a Christmas tree, I was happy with it overall (at least the tips of the branches were what I’d envisioned…). There are things I’ll do differently next Christmas, but that’s nothing I have to worry about right now. The important thing is that I got what I wanted, and I started what I wanted. I can always change my mind again if I want to.

This whole thing—including all its messiness—is what moving forward looks like.

This daylight view shows the tips of the branches in detail, and some of the others are
somewhat visible, too. I didn't like the lights' white wires.