How to Decorate a Christmas Tree

By Allison Elizabeth

STEP ONE: Find the Perfect Tree

The weather has been getting colder. Red noses covered in freckles and dusted with snowflakes lead the way through the Christmas Tree farm. It would be much easier to browse the department stores. Buy a plastic tree you can assemble by hand and plug into a wall, but you want something real. Something that has spent her youth in the ground, earning each of her rings by surviving year after year. She has grown her branches the perfect color of the other side. You’re taken aback by her. She is an actress on the stage. Her performance is based in truth. You need her. She has the right to be nothing but chosen. You bring her branch to your red freckled nose, sniffling as you take all of her in. You whisper in her branches, you’re so good, I’m worried I’m nothing like you. She can’t respond in any other way than remaining where she stands. You smile, accepting this. You grab your axe and cut her down, gently carrying her to your car to drive home. She feels like she is flying. She is going to have a home with you. 

Graphic by Kiera Davidson

STEP TWO: Add the Lights

You place her in the center of your apartment. Screw the couch and coffee table and computer; she is the center of the season. You invite your sister over and make her meet your beautiful new piece. When you and the tree are alone you gift her with lights. You tell her about the party you are planning. How everyone will love her and dance around her. You have told all of your friends about her, and you can’t wait for her to meet everyone. 

STEP THREE: Add the Ornaments 

You went inside your closet and couldn’t find any ornaments. You could’ve sworn you put them on your tree last year. A bad omen. No. You don’t believe in signs or fate, it was a decision you made. 

You aren’t a collector. It’s all just clutter, clutter, clutter. It’s going to get stuck in your curls and distract from the freckles on your nose and cheeks and lips. You think of your centerpiece and you wonder why you brought her in at all. What were you even going to do with her after the holidays? You tried to do something with her for now, which you guess is the best you could’ve done. 

STEP FOUR: Turn to Dust

Without a frown, without a smile, without anything on your face at all you take the lights off your centerpiece. It had to be done. She is a tree and she cannot talk, so she cannot beg you to keep her. You turn her on her side, and drag her down the hall. She can’t demand you to put her lights back on. She can’t ask why you would do this to her. You open the door and push her out the front. You leave her corpse by the rest of the garbage on the curb. Her words wouldn’t have mattered anyway, your decision was already made. 

STEP FIVE: Top with the Star

Standing alone at the side of the road is a betrayal. Her home is not the road. She deserves to be where the hot chocolate is poured and the cookies are baked. The question of if she can eat them is still up in the air, as you have only given her water. Sure, she can survive on water, but she could thrive with sugar. It’s more work than you probably wanted to heat the milk on the stove, chop up the chocolate, and top with marshmallows. For God’s sake it’s just a tree and you were always going to throw it out. Christmas lasts only one day and you can’t live in a state of being that is not present. When the clock ticks, the lights fade, your mind has to return to the sinking river it knows so well. She is not dead. She is alive. The snow falling on her barren needles are more precious than any decoration you could have dressed her in. The strangers passing by notice. Poor girl, who would leave her out in the cold like this? You. This was premeditated. You are afraid to let things last longer than you believe they should. It is not kind, but it is your right. No one needs to have a tree. The strangers reach out to her branches, they bring their red noses to her. She smells as beautiful as she looks. For a moment she thinks if she could speak she would tell them about how you threw her away, but instead she synthesizes the stranger’s words. They do not chop her down, they keep their noses close, they wrap their arms around her forming four walls. This is home. One of the strangers releases for a moment, her branches bounce and shake. The stranger takes a pendant off of their neck and places it at the top of her branches. A star. She is a tree so she cannot speak or cry, but she can feel, and she feels these strangers are not strangers at all.