Op-Ed: The holidays don't have to be stressful. That's what a potted Christmas tree taught my family (via latimesopinion)
to cut our own in the wild. Surrounded by snow and fueled by hot chocolate, we would hand-pick a noble fir with serenely proportioned branches and a scent that put candles to shame. That first year, it seemed like every pillow, towel or ornament display presented a smug image of a station wagon with its evergreen haul strapped to the roof. I yearned for a holiday so iconic.
If you’re anything like me — with a psyche deeply informed by ’80s family sitcoms and general anxiety about getting family life right — you’ll understand my initial skepticism. The plant was at least two feet shorter than the average Christmas tree, almost bushlike. It had a crooked trunk and sparse branches that even well-placed ornaments couldn’t remedy.
Now we trim and shape the same tree every year, and it has shaped us back — helping to remake our holidays into a more calming ritual. First, having a live tree provides natural timing to bookend decorating: We bring the tree inside on Dec. 6 and return it to our yard the day after Christmas, so it can survive its brief stay inside. It was too small to accommodate all the ornaments we had each inherited, so we went through them one-by-one and decided purposefully what to keep and what to donate.
We put our tree in a plastic pot so one person could manage the weight. Our Christmas became something we could physically carry. We watered it, rotated it in the sunny months and visited it whenever we wanted. We watched as our sons, inspired by tending to the sequoia, became more vigilant about caring for all trees in the world.
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