Well, we did it. We put up four Christmas trees this past week. Not four in one house, mind you. I realize some of you do this and more in your homes, but that’s not the Goodman approach.
In recent years, we have struggled to put up one tree in our home before it was time to take it down. This year, we put that tree up, plus one in both of our offices and one at our cabin. They are all more Charlie Brown than the Rockefeller Center, but they undoubtedly signify that the Christmas holiday is near, and that makes me smile.
As a kid, I recall putting up the Christmas tree with Mom. This was not something Dad would partake in, and my three siblings were nowhere in sight. That was fine with me, as the process was a special time with just my mother and me, and everyone else likely had their turns in prior years.
Mom would drag that old, tattered box out of the attic, and we would unpack the artificial tree, carefully sorting each branch for the right level. I would handle the first few rows but was too small to help with the tall stuff.
Then came the ornaments, which included a few homemade keepsakes and lots of those thin metal balls, mostly red and silver, as I recall. They weren’t anything fancy, and for good reason, as a few seemed to shatter each year, creating quite the safety hazard in our 1970s shag carpet.
The Christmas lights were the frustrating part. Despite Mom’s meticulous efforts to keep them straight, they were a tangled mess — and half of them seemed to be burned out. Fortunately, we had a few hundred replacement bulbs that, as I recall, were scorching hot when turned on. It’s amazing more trees didn’t catch on fire.
Mom seemed to really like tinsel, and it showed. Maybe it was trendy at the time. Maybe not. Either way, our Christmas tree was wrapped in those shiny silver strings.
The final touch on our tree was the angel on the top — not a star like many of you may have, but an ornate angel perched on high, looking over us. I dreamed of the day when I would be tall enough to put it on top of the tree. I am still dreaming.
Our Christmas trees today don't look much like the one Mom and I put up more than 50 years ago, and that’s probably a good thing. In reality, the look of the tree doesn’t matter. As Linus van Pelt so famously said in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”: “I never thought it was such a bad little tree. It's not bad at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love.”
And love is what Christmas is all about — with tinsel or without.
Have a great week, and thanks for reading.
Shane Goodman
President and Publisher
Big Green Umbrella Media
shane@dmcityview.com
515-953-4822, ext. 305 | 
