A Who Kind of Christmas

          Two days before Thanksgiving, Honey calls to tell me he has been injured at work and will meet me at the doctor’s. The fact that he was going to see a doctor let me know that it must be serious. Honey is no stranger to getting injured near the holidays. A few years ago he was coming down the stairs on Christmas morning and blew out his knee. Then the next year he hurt it again and had to have surgery right before Thanksgiving. The surgery didn’t go well and we spent the night before Thanksgiving in the emergency room. This year, it was his arm, but they postponed his surgery until after Thanksgiving which was nice.

It was nice until I remembered that all of our Christmas decorations are packed in storage. Now I won’t say Honey is a Grinch, but he can take or leave the holidays. Despite my pleading, he packed all of our Christmas stuff in the back of our storage unit. His reasoning is that we only use it once a year which still didn’t make any sense to me since we never use the other stuff. Because there are so many heavy items and things are stacked high (and somewhat precariously), Honey is the only one who can get them out safely. With his arm out of commission, we are out of luck. I could be crazy and try to get the stuff out on my own, but I figured we can only have one of us at a time on injured reserve.

I was so disappointed. Christmas is my favorite holiday and now I wouldn’t have any of the decorations I love. I broke the news to the kids. They were as disappointed as I was. They said “We aren’t going to have a tree?” Of course we will! I told them we were going to get a real tree and hit the Dollar Store for some decorations. My daughter and I got some tinsel and ornaments at the Dollar Store the next day, but they didn’t have any trees at the grocery store next door. Later that night, I had to go to Lowe’s for some home repair stuff, so I took my 11 year old son to help pick a tree. He has more Christmas spirit than one of Santa’s elves and I really needed the morale boost.

Lowe’s had some trees for $19.99, so you know where I was headed. My son wanted to stop and look at all the Christmas decorations of course. He loves the animated ones and has to turn all of them on at the same time. When we got to the trees, the $19.99 ones had been picked over, but I found a pretty decent one. I spun it around. It didn’t have major holes or defects. I turned to show my son, who smiled and said “That one’s nice, but I really had my heart set on this one.” He pointed to a gnarly, funky little tree that reminded me of a Charlie Brown Christmas. I was afraid it would fall apart if we put tinsel on it.

“Son, this one is a little bigger and fuller.” He looked at me with his big blue eyes and said “You don’t like the one I picked?” Sigh. “Ok, buddy. Pick it up and let’s go.”

We got home and Honey and my daughter looked at the tree with identical frowns. I gave them the stink eye warning to keep their mouths shut saying “Isn’t this a nice tree?”

That night we laughed and decorated our little tree and set up the few decorations we were able to find at the Dollar Store. I sat back and counted my blessings. We were all together and healthy, and Honey’s arm is going to be ok in a few months. I thought about the end of the Grinch story when all the Whos hold hands and sing even though all of their Christmas stuff is gone. I get it. I look at my funky little tree with its twinkling lights and Dollar Store ornaments and smile. It’s the best tree ever.