The Perfect Christmas

She grew up with table trees. She thought this was the way you did Christmas. Her mother had a heavy low circular Mexican wooden table in the corner of the living room with a hole in the middle. The hole was covered by an additionally heavy metal bowl with two handles so you could remove the bowl to make a doughnut table where, in the middle, it was possible to place a tree, if you were so inclined. She was pretty sure this was not what the doughnut hole was for, but this was how it was used in her house. Every year, a Christmas tree sprouted from the doughnut hole in the middle of that Mexican table.

Then, came the eternal process of ironing thirty red silk ribbons, tying each into a bow, adding a green twisty to the back, and carefully placing the completed creations in strategic positions around the tree so they would all look evenly distributed. Yes, red silk bows, all over the table tree. Her mother had seen it in a magazine once, and that was it. The red bow tradition was launched.

Early on, most of the bows she made would be re-done by her mother. Later, when she got good at it, hers were the best. She learned that you started the bow on the right, folding a bunny ear-shaped loop with a shorter section of the ribbon, then looped the left side around the bunny ear, to pull it through and create the other bunny ear. A bow with no knot, just two perfect ears and two perfect tails. The wrapped-around part became the base for the twisty. Her tails were always even, and she knew how to cut the ends, with sharp scissors only, so they slanted just-so, mirror images of each other. Once the bows were in place, the lights went on, only white lights, which were, back then, soft, not harsh, like they are now. You’re supposed to do the lights first, but that’s only if you don’t do bows. This is important to understand.

Once, early on in her marriage, she had acquiesced to her husband and allowed colored lights to be put on the tree. Upon completion, she promptly burst into tears. He was sweet enough to take the colored lights down and replace them with white (soft white.) Another year, before kids, somehow, but she doesn’t remember how, the tree feel on top of her, and she had laid there on the floor unable to get out from underneath it with the dog licking her face until her husband came up from his downstairs office to lift it off her. She still blames the incident on the floor tree. That never would have happened with a table tree, especially a table tree sprouting from a doughnut hole.

After bows and lights, all the cherished little wooden ornaments would get pulled out of little boxes with tissue paper. The shiny black chimney sweeper with one missing arm always went front and center. This is a tradition she has continued with much sentimentality and severe longing. The flying ballerina pig holding a wreath, and the little girl dressed in a green winter ski outfit standing on a swing flank Mr. Chimney Sweeper. This is The Way.

When you have a table tree, you get to put all the presents on top of the table, which alleviates stooping and awkward reaching. She still believes table trees are the best way to go, however the other people in her house do not agree, and so she stoops and reaches with great drama.

In the past few years there has been much debate in her house about the star. They used to use a small multi-colored tin Mexican star, but everyone agreed that the size was not in proportion to the extra tall floor tree that she was now forced to host in her home. Then, she tried to sell the others in her family on a Santa star she inherited from her mother – more sentimentality – but they were not having it. This year the tree started out with a dog-chewed Elf on the Shelf and a huge, perfectly tied, gold bow as a possible star. They all agreed, No. She ordered a Scandinavian straw starburst from Amazon, which is currently in the honored tippy-top spot of the floor tree. Everyone is considering its rightness. The jury is out.

But to her, Christmas will always have a multi-colored stuffed camel from India with tiny round mirror beads placed just to the left of the base of the table tree, a matchy-matchy vintage salt and pepper shaker with one teddy bear sitting on a red striped chair and the other on a green striped chair placed proudly at the center of the mantle, a tree in the doughnut hole of a heavy circular Mexican table, red silk bows, and a star, that was perfect, of course, but which she cannot remember exactly, and so she searches and searches … and searches.