The Family Christmas Tradition 2008

By William James Steinmetz – My Blog

Twenty years ago my mother wrote an article for a small Nashville, TN community newspaper called Parents Place. It was about a family tradition of putting up the Christmas tree and how we fought while doing it. Well, as I was typing the article into a document to put on my blog I thought that I may as well go ahead and update it with my family. Okay, my wife Carla suggested it but I can take it as mine. We do that sort of thing. We think alike even when we don’t. You married people know what I mean.

We put up a tree every other Christmas as we alternate between here in Florida and Nashville every other year. When we are in Nashville for Christmas we don’t bother decorating here as we will not be able to enjoy it. So this year, we went to Nashville for Thanksgiving and we will be here for Christmas. Let the decorating begin.

It starts out with the whole family getting excited to help. But I am the one who goes out to the garage to get the huge plastic containers that have the ornaments in them. There are four and two are quite heavy as they contain little glass houses and lots of sets of lights. Most of the lights do not work so this year we decided to buy new sets to use. Well, Carla goes off to a friends craft and bake sale; I get ready to retrieve all the cases from the garage and the tree from the guest room closet. The boys of course are no where to be found. I grumble the whole time.

Once Carla returns about 45 minutes later with a few cookies we start putting the 14 year old artificial tree together. We pull out the longest branches and set them aside. Then I hunt for the instructions and find them along the side of the box relatively close to the top. I insert the bottom part of the tree into the base and the main part onto the bottom. We read the instructions (well we look at the picture) and gather the white tipped branches. While Carla and I straighten out the branches and arrange the “leaves” into something that actually resembles a pine tree, Jean-Luc reads a book, Anton plays his GameBoy ® and Chris waits to help us by putting them on the tree.

Carla and I need to get back into the swing of things as it has been two years since we last did this. We progress slowly and Chris keeps up. As we get quicker to straightening and setting, we start to get a little ahead of Chris. There comes a point where he isn’t tall enough to reach as we are not about 6 layers up. I start to place them. Then we get to the 7th layer we are missing a branch. We leave the hole in the back of the tree. The next layer we are missing one as well. In the back of the tree again with the missing branch. The next layer we are missing two and I started to think something was wrong.

The sizes of the branches were getting smaller and I look down at the first stack we pulled out and said “where do these go?” They were much bigger than what we were putting on the tree now. Well, the tradition continues as we had to take off all the branches and place those nice big long ones on the very bottom. Then miracle of miracles all the layers had all the branches they needed. After messing with this for a couple hours I finally was able to put the top of the tree on. It actually looks like a pine tree.

Well, it was time for the lights. We open the first box of new lights that we had decided were going to go around the archway to the formal living room. I thought that they looked okay and went about placing them on the hooks on the ceiling. They were up when Carla walked back into the room and said “what are those doing up?” “Those were the ones we said we were going to put there when we were at the store” I replied. “The wires are huge. It doesn’t look good at all” Carla said. After a short discussion we decided to leave them until later.

The next set of new lights came out of the box. As I unraveled it, I plugged it in to make sure it was working. All the lights came on and nothing blinked. Like my mother I am not a big fan of blinking lights. This was a set that would go toward the inside part of the tree nearest the truck. I walked ahead of Carla around and around the tree as she took the slack I was giving her and neatly placed the lights inside the tree. We had unplugged the lights at that point to make it easier to move them around the tree. Once plugged back in they just didn’t look right and Carla decided that I needed to take down the lights from the entry way and we would use those on the inside of the tree. I did with little hesitation and some mumbling under my breath that I hope she didn’t hear. Carla removed the other ones and we proceeded with those.

That set didn’t quite make it to the top so we pulled out a smaller set to finish the inside of the tree off. That one made it most of the way and another small set was used to finish it off and start down the back to work them around the outside of the tree. One more set follow and then the moment of truth. All the lights were plugged into there necessary sockets and the power strip was turned on. Two of the four sets glowed in all there glory. The other two sets absolutely nothing. No sparkle. No hint of sparkling. Not even a dream of sparkling. I was ready to cry. Why didn’t I think of plugging them in to check them? My dad would have done that. I think to myself ID-10-T error.

At that point in time, I’d had it. Carla was done as well and we decided it would wait for another day.

Three days later. Carla is taking Anton to a friend’s house to work on their science project (I’m so over those). She told Chris and me to get the lights figured out. Chris disappeared to play a game on the computer and JL was reading a book in his room. I set about trying to figure out what the heck happened.

I tackled the light strand on the bottom of the tree first. As if by magic, the third light I checked was loose. I pushed it in to secure it and the lights lit. Amazing. Now if I could be so lucky with the other strand.

The other strand was on the top part of the tree. Even for me that is up there and I decide I had no choice but to unwind it from the tree. Once unwound, I started checking the bulbs. It was the middle of a two hundred bulb strand that I found the culprit but it wouldn’t stay in no matter how hard I pushed. I got a replacement bulb that came with it tried that. The replacement bulbs bases were too small. What? The bulbs that came with it were too small. I took the bulb out of the bigger base and then one from a smaller base and put that bulb in the bigger base. It went back into the socket and the lights came on. Just about that time, Carla returned with Anton.

It was now time for the ornaments. We started by placing the larger balls on the tree. Carla carefully took them out of their box and gave them to the boys. One to Anton, one to Chris, and one to Jean-… Where was Jean-Luc? Not out there helping us. He was off reading his book. Carla and I bellowed “JEAN-LUC!!!!!” at the same time. He came downstairs grumbling and grumpy (must get that from grandpa) not really wanting to help. He was handed the ornament. He placed it on the tree and sat down on the sofa and started reading again. Carla and I were not happy but for our 13 year old getting him to read was like pulling teeth and now we can’t get him to stop to help. Carla had enough and sent him to his room to think about it.

Anton and Chris were putting the ornaments on like there was no tomorrow. The larger balls put on the bottom of the tree. As the balls got progressively smaller the higher up the tree they were placed.

Jean-Luc was called back down and asked if he was ready to help. He said yes and put his book away. Things moved along. Ornaments were moved around at the direction of Carla when the boys put them too close together or too high or low on the tree depending on their size. Finally all the balls were on and we moved to the special ornaments.

From Christmas 2008

We have been buying the Star Trek® ornaments from the Hallmark® store for years. They light up and make noise or say something. The way that works is you take a bulb out of the strand and plug to ornament into it. Well, the mini-lights we bought do not have big enough sockets for them to plug into to. I was not about to change the lights again so we proceeded without having them light up. The ones we bought last and this year turned out to have batteries and did not need to be plugged in. Yeah!

After all the lights were on the tree, I held Anton up on my shoulder (he is getting heavy) and he placed the Christmas Angel on the top. We plugged everything in again and turned off the lights and looked in wonder at the beautiful tree.

So the Steinmetz family tradition of putting up the tree with some fighting (not really mentioned) continues with our boys. Hopefully, in twenty years the boys will look back at this and remember all the fun it really was like I remember and write in their blogs (or whatever they are using in 20 years) about their Christmas tree decorating experiences with their kids.

Oh and after all was said and done, I snuck my Pittsburgh Steelers’® ornament on the tree when Carla wasn’t looking.

From Christmas 2008

Merry Christmas! I hope your family has a Christmas tradition of its own.