Tannenbaum

We brought our Christmas tree home last Thursday. It's gloriously unadorned in our living room. We are wondering if adding decorations will improve anything.

It leans a little. It's drinking water, dropping needles and smelling good.

My wife and I are very sympatico when we choose a tree. It takes about 45 seconds. We look at one tree and the trees on either side of it and say "we'll take that one."

We both have more or less accepted the absolute truth that no tree will look the same at home as it does on the lot. And we know that the trees are alike in that they all have idiosyncracies--holes, dead places, crooked branches. They're all like that. Sometimes the "defects" don't show, but they're there.

Some folks seek the perfect Christmas tree just as they seek the perfect “Christmas experience”--happy, well-adjusted family; warm feelings over eggnog around the fire; the joyful anticipation and fulfilled promise they may have known on previous Christmases.

As much as we hunt for the “perfect” tree or dream of the "perfect" Christmas, things will likely not work out as we want. This is tough for us.

We may come to accept that trees are not perfect, but it's much harder to accept that life doesn't look the way we want, at Christmas as much as any other time. Things are not as easy for us as we’d like. Our kids make bad decisions. Someone has an accident. Someone gets very sick. Someone lets us down or betrays us.

What is wonderful, though, is that Christmas holds such potential for surprise. We may just find ourselves experiencing something in a new way, or being moved unexpectedly. If we let down our guard a bit, and haul that defective tree into the house, even though it’s already shedding needles everywhere.