The Christmas Ruiner

                

             Ahh Christmas.  What a wonderful time of year.  Lights ablaze on all the houses, glowing trees in the windows, Bing Crosby on the radio and overpriced eggnog lattes, this is what Christmas is to me.

               Christmas to my husband?  Over-commercialization, overspending, and fire hazards at every turn....  How do two people who have such different ideas of the season come together so they can both enjoy the holiday equally?  They drink and fantasize about smothering each other with the Christmas stockings.

               But after they do that, if they want to stay married, they talk, they argue, and then they compromise, which is the secret to any relationship, isn't?   Meeting in the middle. Sure he may bitch about the money we're spending a few hundred times and I may have to scream, "YOU'RE RUINING CHRISTMAS!!" every couple of days, but now it's like tradition, and it probably wouldn't seem like Christmas without it.

             One of the biggest dilemmas we face is the friggin' Christmas tree, the very symbol of the holiday for Chrissakes.  Now let me back up.  Doug, my husband, never quite had the Norman Rockwell Christmas like I did.  I was extremely fortunate to have all the traditional "traditions".  Every year my mom, dad, brother and I would pack up the car and drive those 17 torturous hours to Seattle to spend the week with my mom's family.  With all aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents counted there were about 20 of us, each one more filled to the brim with Christmas cheer and hot buttered rums than the last.

           We listened to carols, we showed off our new walk-mans, we ate the same old Christmas cookies that the family has been making since the dawn of time, and we sat around the Christmas tree and reveled in the Spirit.  It was a wonderful time and something I will treasure forever.

         My husband didn't quite have the same experience, however.  Because his parents split up when he was young, and since they moved around a lot he rarely had Christmas in the same place, so their repeating traditions never really got established.  Half the time he and his brother would be with his mom, who had the tree and all the good stuff, but the other half of the time was spent with their dad, Leon, who was "unconventional" to say the least. 

         Most of the time their dad wouldn't buy a Christmas tree, no no no, that was too expected, after all, the man was no sheep.  What he'd do was buy a string of Christmas lights, pick a piece of furniture and blammo!  It became the Christmas Entertainment Center!  They also had the Christmas Bike and The Christmas Broom (but if you ask me his heart just wasn't in it that year).  They'd sit around the Christmas Bike and sing carols, so I suppose they did have a few semblances of tradition, just a little different than what I was used to.

             Keeping all that in mind I didn't quite know what to expect with Christmas when I first moved in with Doug.  So, travel back with me to early December 2003, won't you?

             There I was, spending our first Christmas in Maryland with Doug in our new home.  The living room was large, with great corners for a tree, which is really what we look at when we buy a house, am I right?  Maybe that's just me.

            It's early December and I announce to Doug that we need to go out and buy a tree for the house.  He gives me an uninterested look and says, "Why don't you just stop on your way home tomorrow and pick it up, you have a much better idea of what you're looking for, the tree thing is all you, babe."  This is his way of saying, "don't wanna."

           So, my visions of us strolling arm in arm through the tree lot in our mittens, hats and scarves while sipping cocoa and listening to the canned carols over the crackly loudspeakers were quickly dashed.  It was just be me, party of one, for the tree shopping.  "Hey Earl, can ya help the single lady load up her tree?  She's obviously crying too hard to do it herself." Not exactly what I had in mind....

           But, I was trying to convince myself that it was ok, we were getting a tree, and that was all that mattered.  So the next night after work I stopped by Home Depot to look at the trees as planned and as I'm walking through I'm getting more and more irritated. I'm passing all the couples doing the romantic tree shopping bullshit that I was supposed to be doing!  SCREW THEM!  MY HUSBAND SUCKS!
       
           As the minutes ticked by and the more couples I saw smiling and checking trees for needle droppage I lost it.  I started crying, right there, in the Home Depot tree lot.  Pathetic.

           So, I got upset, then I got MAD.  I stomped out of there, got into my car, sped home, flung open the front door, pointed to Doug and said, "YOU.  IN THE CAR.  NOW."  So he didn't want to come with me, TOO FRICKEN BAD.  It's Christmas and you will get into the goddamned spirit if it kills me!

        And what do you know, he got in, we went to the lot, picked out a tree, put in on top of the car, and drove home, our hands sticky with sap but our hearts light with love and Christmas joy.  Okay so that may be over exaggerating a tad, Doug was irritated at the price of trees and I was irritated at him for being irritated at the price of trees, IT'S CHRISTMAS, GET OVER IT.  But whatever, I had my tree and I was happy, despite whiney boyfriend.

         So the tree looked great in our house and smelled great too, this is the reason why we get real trees, isn't it?  The pretty stink of it, that's Christmas, man.  I was glad to see that Doug, once he got over grumbling about the price, enjoyed the tree as well.  First thing he'd do when he got up in the morning was plug in the tree, and, although he said it was no Christmas bike, it was nice to look at.
 
        We go to enjoy our tree for the next couple of weeks before leaving for Seattle where we would spend Christmas with the family, who were all waiting there, sipping hot cocoa in their holiday sweaters. 

        So there we are, getting ready for our trip.  I'm packing the warm coats, wrapping the presents, and picking out the  pajamas that will look best in all those Christmas-morning pictures. I'm going about my merry way, eating cookies and listening to carols while we pack when Doug suddenly announces that it's time to take down the Christmas tree.  Wha?  Huh?  Wha?  Take down the Christmas tree?  Why?

Me:   "I'm sorry, I must have misunderstood you.  It almost sounded like you said it was time to take take down the Christmas tree."

Him:  "I did.  It's a fire hazard."

Me:  "How?  If we unplug the lights it'll be fine."

Him:  "Not necessarily.  It could still catch on fire."

Me:   "No it won't."

Him:  "Yes it will."

Me:  "BUT HOW WILL IT CATCH ON FIRE IF THE LIGHTS AREN'T ON AND IT'S NOT NEAR ANY OPEN FLAME?"

Him:  "It's just smart thinking, we just can't take the chance."

I mean honestly, the tree was next to the bare wall in the living room, not near ANY open flame or fire source.  What the hell was he expecting?  Punk kids to break in and flick their lit cigarette butts at it?

                              
                                 Maybe a meteor could fly through the window and light the tree on fire.



            Smart thinking?  Who ever heard of such a thing?  I mean honestly.  Isn't everything a fire hazard?  My old stack of People magazines?   Our mail bin?  Box of Cheez-its?  What's to prevent those from spontaneously combusting as well?  Maybe we should just empty out the entire house while we're at it!

          But, he wouldn't budge on this mysterious tree igniting story, so what could I do?  I eventually just threw my hands up and gave in, because honestly, it's Christmas and who wants to argue. And unfortunately, as much as I hate it sometimes, this is what you do in a marriage, you compromise.......even when it's over something so ridiculous like the magical fire fairies who might sneak down our chimney and blow up our tree. 

         So I took off the ornaments and horrifyingly watched as he tucked our beautiful, now naked little Douglas Fir under his arm and deposited it on the curb for the trash truck SEVEN DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS, all the while figuring that this was probably just his passive aggressive way to buck tradition.

He really, after all, just wanted a Christmas bike.

             So, in light of this story we made another compromise when it came to future Christmas trees.  We now have a gloriously tacky little ultra bright white tree that we put up every Christmas and store in a box in the garage for the rest of the time.  I mean, if you're going to go fake, might as well go SUPER DUPER fake.  My compromise was that I had to live without the nice tree smell, and his compromise was that we could leave the tree up until New Years (as long as the lights were unplugged).

            When I get annoyed at the weird little things my husband obsesses over I stop and think, "Hey, this is what makes life interesting, right?"  Who wants a husband who doesn't check whether the stove is on, the doors are locked and the fridge is open a hundred times before we leave for a trip?  Not me.  I'll take my slightly paranoid, mildly obsessive compulsive, unofficial fire marshal any day. He keeps it interesting......and totally fire free.