Amy Lu's View

In my last post I celebrated a new twist on our Christmas tree traditions, but tonight, we kept it Old School and put up our real Christmas tree while we listened to our CD of the Muppets and John Denver.

So Christmas tree traditions are on my mind. I don’t really have family Christmas tree traditions that I remember. We always had a tree, and  I always loved it, but I think it was usually something my mom handled putting up by herself when she had time to do it.

I don’t feel I have family traditions about too many things. As an adult, I’ve been learning how to navigate traditions…to create and celebrate ones that are meaningful but not presciptive or limiting.

I feel the Chamy Christmas Tree hits this sweet spot. We had all the key ingredients: 1) a real tree, 2) the Muppets CD, and 3) some alcohol, but this year we had some updates. Most notably, we deviated from our custom of having our “classy” color-coordinated ornaments on our real tree. Instead, we included many of our most-notably kitschy ornaments that we usually only have on our fake tree (now bedecked soley with race-finisher medals). And, we drank martinis (our alcohol choice has cycled through eggnog, Irish coffees, and wine…).

Whether classy or kitschy (and the line between them is certainly fuzzy for us) most of our ornaments are infused with memories. There’s the Santa ornament I’ve had since 5th grade, the red drumset our friend Gary gave us, and the Cats First Christmas ornament.

And then there are the mostly remants of the ornaments from the very first tree we had together when we lived (in sin!) in Iowa. I remember my mother gave us $50 to buy decorations for that tree, which I at first thought was crazy extravagant, but soon realized went pretty quickly, even in 1993. I’m still struck by how sweet and thoughtful it was for her to realize that “Hey, these mullet-headed kids might be in love but they don’t have enough moola to pull together to decorate a Christmas tree.”

The next year, we (Chad) had to tie said tree to the planter hook that was convenientally on the ceiling so that our very first so that it didn’t fall over when our very first, and much-loved, cat, Rogue, climbed it.

Rogue eventually lost interest in climbing the tree, although she and Jubilee usually “re-decorated” it a bit every year. Our current cats, Pepper and Sprout, have surpisingly never been too interested in the Christmas tree, but we still keep all the breakable ornaments up top, just to be safe.