Christmas Tree Chronicles...

Our first christmas married, we had just moved from a double wide trailer into a small apartment right inside the heart of Montgomery. It was covered in wallpaper that was a fuzzy texture, with a washing machine that wouldn’t drain and a dishwasher that would only run on Cody’s makeshift string that wrapped the handle, pulled to the countertop and under the coffee jar.

But it was ours.

Christmas approached and all that I dreamed our first Christmas would be was slipping through the cracks of my unfortunately low bank account. We had roughly $4 and not a single decoration. I knew it just wasn’t in the cards for a tree, let alone gifts. In fact, writing this post, I am certain I have zero memory of anything we got one another that Christmas.

Cody knew my disappointment so he got creative with what we had.

He took a plastic drawer set I used all during college. (Don’t act like you didn’t have them either. We all did. Walmart, aisle 1 million, 15.99 for the chest of drawers of your dreams, pick your color. Mine was purple.)

He set it in the middle of our living room and took garland that my aunt was getting rid of. He wrapped the plastic drawer set (which was loaded with art supplies) with it, making it essentially one pile of garland bush. We found abandoned icicle lights that were being thrown in the dumpster and draped it over the “Walmart plastic drawer garland christmas bush” and I stepped back to stare. Cody was proud and I was, well— devastated.

By December 23rd we bought a Christmas tree that was majority dead from Walmart for $12, some LED lights, and a can of faux snow, put it on a credit card (before we didn’t believe in them anymore) and proudly drove it back to our little apartment.

I thought if I put some Faux snow on my windows and had the smell of real pine running through our apartment, all would be ok and my house might be a close second to the Home Alone house (macaulay culkin edition). Christmas would surely be saved.

The faux snow just added a weird smelling foam on my window and the tree was dead by Christmas day, but it was ours.

It was our attempt of having what we knew Christmas to be.

The smell, the sounds, the look. I wasn’t trying to show something off, I just wanted a memory. I wanted to make it so special, grand, sweet. I wanted to make a moment or a day that I could look back on when we had kids and Grandkids and tell them about our first married Christmas. What I was left with was this sad attempt (so I thought) of forcing Christmas with little to nothing. Honestly, It was just a glorified pity party.

The year following dead tree christmas, was a 3ft hand-me down tree that someone was throwing away. Cody’s gift to me was actually taller than the tree itself. A painted picture of a cow. One of my all time favorites.

The third year, there was no decor. We were moving out of a house we fixed and paying off student loan debt that weighed us down. We celebrated Christmas day in an almost empty home and it was 80 degrees outside.

The fourth year, we found an old fake tree in the rafters of a garage attached to the duplex we had just bought and renovated. It was missing 49% of the limbs and smelled like mildew, but it sufficed.

This year, we “invested” in a pre-lit tree. Michael’s, 50% off. We played music. We aren’t getting each other presents. We bought a candle that smelled like pine. Our first baby is coming in January and we will probably go see a movie together and eat popcorn with way too much butter and drink our favorite kind of coke. Because we are learning us, our health, our life and miracles are happening well outside the realm of the tree that cost too much and the atmosphere that is all around us. It’s being together, just us this last Christmas before baby, that makes it so magic to us.

A few days ago I was going through that same set of plastic drawers that I’ve had since college, trying to rummage out some tape and a sharpie. Of course it was jammed. Something stuck, holding the door from opening properly.

I reached back and managed to wrangle out what was causing the plastic drawer traffic jam.

The bottle of Faux Spray Snow.

The memory of imperfect, credit card debt to a dead tree, tears that it wasn’t what I hoped and a memory of the most imperfectly perfect Christmas rushed over me.

I laughed.

I haven’t written this to convince you that it’s not about the presents or the tree and all about Jesus. Although, all of previous sentence is completely true.

But I think there’s something so profoundly stunning about what happens to us outside of time. When we look back on a moment that felt so sad and depressing and almost wish it back.

Just a moment to look at old Laura and tell her this is the best story I could tell. That popping in a disc of season 8 of friends (because that’s the only season I had) and cuddling next to my husband with a dead Christmas tree in the living room and the wretched smell of faux snow on my window might actually be one of our best Christmas’ of all time.

Who knows, maybe this year I’ll tie a bow around that can of faux snow and set it out as a reminder that that may have been the best Christmas we ever had. Just us, no money, no agenda, a dead tree and each other.

I bet our grandkids will think it made for the best story yet.

Pictures by Nalin Crocker.