There comes a point in your life when you must make an important decision every December: whether to put up a Christmas tree this year. By now, at 65 years old or thereabouts, you question the need for one. After all, your home is likely no longer the gathering place for the whole family. The next generation and their progeny have taken over the annual holiday get-together (“Taking the kids: And starting a new holiday tradition wherever you are,” Nov. 23).
You’ve already changed some elements of your decorating, replacing the live tree purchased at the high school lot and hauled home lashed to the top your car with an economical, hassle-free and eco-friendly artificial one (that comes pre-hung with hundreds of tiny LED lights). You’ve even neglected to hang all your ornaments, collected over a lifetime and stored 11 months a year in three crumbling boxes way back in the attic with the creaky pull-down stairs more wobbly and less stable each year.
You and your spouse go back and forth on whether “to tree or not to tree,” maybe changing your minds once or twice independent of the other. Concluding that you are still in good enough shape — this year — to carry the huge box containing the 6-foot tall everlasting Norway spruce from the shed to the living room, unpack it and assemble the parts, you put up the tree. You swear to yourself that you will not hang all the ornaments, but as you unload them it seems each piece triggers a special memory: The two boxes of red and green balls that you purchased for your first tree in your first apartment in 1974, the colorful wooden figures hand painted with your nephew and mother four decades ago, the flashing tree topper that is a remnant from spouse’s bachelor days and the tiny ballerina and stocky Santa that survive from your childhood tree decorations.
Later, sitting in the living room and gazing up at the tree with lights twinkling, we put off thinking that in less than three weeks we will have to take down the ornaments and store them in the attic and disassemble the tree and haul it back to the shed. The happy memories the tree inspires from Christmases past make us feel grateful and blessed in 2023. Whether you do or don’t choose to “deck the halls,” it’s the spirit of the holidays you’re never too old to celebrate which gives joy and hope to every season of life.
— Rosemary Faya Prola, Columbia
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