Christmas trees have always been taboo in my family. Probably in part because we’re Jewish, but mostly just because my dad always said no! I can remember as far back as the second-grade longing to have the one thing I knew I wouldn’t be getting as a Hanukkah gift… my own Christmas tree.
For years, my best friend Joe and I, an Italian Catholic boy from the neighborhood, would try to devise a feasible plan and change my dad’s mind. We would actually rehearse what we were going to say for days before approaching him, lying through our teeth and involving anyone who would partake in our escapades. Yet, never in my 21 years that I “lived under my father’s roof” did he ever give in. Nevertheless, my dad always gave us an A+ for effort.
I recall one year we swore we had the foolproof plan. Joe came over to my house just after supper like he always did. However, this night instead of going straight to my room, he stopped in the living room for a quick chat with Teddy, my dad. Nonchalantly Joe mentioned that his family had just put up their Christmas tree, and his house looked awfully festive. “You should stop by and take a look,” he suggested. “My parents have been asking about you.”
“Sure, Joey, tell them I said hello,” he replied as he continued flicking through the TV stations with the remote control.
“Whatever,” Joe said softly as he skipped down the hallway to meet me in my room.
“Step one is complete,” he snickered as he gave me a high-five. “Your tree is almost in place.”
A couple of days later, right as we were about to sit down for supper, Joe came running into my house all flustered. (Step 2) “Lisa, Lisa! You’ll never guess what happened?” he said, gasping for air.
“What?” I asked, as my mother insisted he sit down to catch his breath.
During the next 10 minutes or so, I, along with the rest of my family, watched Joe act out one of the best performances I’ve ever seen by an amateur youth.
“Well, you see,” still a little out of breath. “Do you remember back during Thanksgiving I entered that contest at the mall? Well, I won!”
“Oh wow!” my sisters and I said in stereo, trying not to play it up too much.
“So, what did you win?” My mom, who was also involved in the trickery, asked.
“A Christmas tree!” he answered. “Can you believe it? The one thing I definitely do not need.”
Then Joe went on to tell us how his family already bought their tree this year and what a shame it would be to let this one go to waste. “We just don’t have enough room in our house for two trees, and my parents insist we always get a real one. The one I won is fake,” he added.
But before another word could be said, my father stood up from his chair at the dinner table and strolled toward the living room. “Nice try,” he said with a grin.
And that was that. Another year down the drain. No tree at the Goldstein’s. Nevertheless, with each new year came another attempt at the impossible.
We tried everything, but through all our efforts, all I ever managed to get approval for was one of those tiny tabletop trees. Unfortunately, even that only lasted about two days before my father started complaining about the flashing lights and the waste of electricity.
Of course, we cannot forget to mention our famous paper tree. This above all had to be my most pathetic attempt to defy my father’s “No Christmas Tree Rule.”
I was almost 12 years old, and this holiday season, I swore that my presents on Christmas morning were going to be placed under some kind of tree. If not, I would finally just throw in the towel. Well, as I said, I had a Christmas tree that year, and although it was beautiful in its own way, it was pathetic!
I had taken a large piece of green cardboard and shaped it like an evergreen tree. Then Joe and I made the decorations. It had everything a Christmas tree was supposed to have. Joe brought over some extra tinsel and garland, and the rest we made from scratch. We had glitter, sequins, icicles, and rainbow paper. You name it, and we had it. We even had gold aluminum foil to make the star, which I appropriately shaped like the Star of David.
For days we cut and pasted little ornaments together and carefully glued them to the tree, and by Christmas Eve, we had it all in place. We cleverly put a table against the wall and covered it like a tree skirt so it would look like our presents were under the tree. Sure, there were no blinking lights or smell of pine, but to me, it was better than nothing.
After that, I guess you could say I just stopped believing in Santa Claus. My mother and I continued to hang the holiday cards along the door moldings, tinsel around the windows ledges, and stockings by the mantle. Just to make it feel a little like Christmas. I’d also take advantage of any and all invitations I received to help my friends decorate their homes. But, I never really understood why my father, the not-so-religious man felt so strongly against the one thing that would bring everlasting joy to his baby girl.
The year 1990, however, was a significant turning point in my life. It was the first year my sisters and I were formerly out from under Daddy’s roof during the holidays. (Although he did own the condo we all resided in for free.) So I had a plan, yet it wasn’t until the 5th of December that it actually clicked in my head.
I was standing on the second-floor balcony looking out at the flashing lights and decorations around the neighborhood while my sisters were below me in the living room watching “Frosty the Snowman.”
Suddenly it hit me. We were not planning to go home for the holidays, nor were our parents flying down this year. “I’m getting a Christmas tree!” I screamed. “Oh, yes. It is going to be the biggest, most beautiful picture-perfect tree anyone has ever seen.”
“Who are you talking to?” The sistas asked.
“I’m talking to myself,” I said.
“No, actually, I’m talking to you two. What is the one thing we’ve always wanted for Christmas?” I asked.
“To win the lotto?” My oldest sister, Melinda, answered.
“No, silly. A Christmas tree!” I shouted. “We are finally going to get the Christmas tree we’ve been waiting for OUR whole lives!”
“Don’t you mean the Christmas tree YOU have been dreaming about your entire life, little sista?” Our middle sister, Vivi, chimed in.
“Fine, then. You can’t even look at it when I’m done. It will be mine and mine alone,” I declared.
“Oh, no,” Melinda said quickly. “I’m with her. I want a Christmas tree too!”
“Okay, whatever. I’ll help with the tree,” Vivi agreed, making it unanimous.
Talk about pathetic. Here we were, three young Jewish women in our twenties talking about shopping for our first Christmas tree. What should we do? Where should we go? I thought.
“Do you think we should get a fake tree so it won’t make such a mess?” Melinda, the least likely of us to clean up any mess, asked.
“No way!” I shouted. “It’s going to be a real tree, and it’s going to be big, and it’s going to smell like fresh pine. Get it?” I stated confidently.
And so it was. The next day we all piled into my car and began to search through roadside stands for the best little Hanukkah bush in Florida. We drove up one highway and down another, passing one tree stand after another, but nothing seemed to interest me. Pine, fir, spruce? I didn’t know what I was looking for. I just wanted to find the tree that had been in the picture in my mind for nearly 22-years. You have to remember that we were new at this and a bit embarrassed to admit that we had no idea what we were doing.
Finally, we stopped at a convenience center near home to gas up, and we noticed a stand set up in the grocery store parking lot. The beautiful poinsettias set around the tent caught my attention immediately. We eagerly began poking around. I was considering buying one of everything. I could see my house a complete vision of red and green lights with bows on every railing and candles on every ledge. Decorations and wreaths are everywhere. But no, I thought, let’s not go overboard, just the tree and maybe one or two poinsettias.
Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted it. The tree that had occupied my thoughts for all those Christmases gone by. It was a “Douglas Fir” about 6 or 7 feet tall with a thick full spread of branches. It didn’t have any bald spots or browning, and it smelled strongly of holiday cheer. “We’ll take it,” I said to the man in charge. “By the way, now what do we do with it?” I chuckled as we watched him hook the tree to my car.
Next, we’re off to the local craft store. Like three children in the candy store, my sisters and I pushed carts around each aisle, tossing in a few of these and a couple of those until our buggies were packed.
When we arrived home, it took all three of us just to get the tree off of my car and into the house, struggling to force it through the sliding glass doors and into the tree stand. “Perfect,” I commented. “Even bare, it is perfect!”
We all spent the next couple of days together, making bows out of spools of ribbon and gluing our names with glitter to stockings. It was coming along quite nicely. Vivi decided to use her collection of seashells like popcorn to make strands and give the tree a little touch of Florida. Melinda and I also dug out any and all of our miscellaneous Christmas paraphernalia. Before long, the tree began to show its exceptional potential.
Sure it took us over two hours to figure out how to connect the lights and set the pacer, and we must have moved each ornament at least two or three times before it found its given place on the tree. But when we were through, it was well worth it.
As we sat together on Christmas Eve looking around the house at the cards taped to the door moldings, the ribbon and bows draped over the railings, and the smell of gingerbread candles burning, it was then that I realized what it was I had truly been longing for. It wasn’t actually the Christmas tree at all, nor whatever religious connotation my father thought the tree represented.
Our family simply lacked the “spirit” during the winter holidays, mainly because we didn’t actually celebrate Hanukkah or Christmas. We just bought each other gifts. But with the tree, the presents didn’t seem nearly as important. They could have been empty boxes, and it wouldn’t have mattered one bit me. For I finally got the one thing I had always wished for, and it gave me more than enough to be thankful for.
I guess out of pure respect, we never did tell my father about the tree. Not to mention that all the photographs we had taken turned out black when we developed them. So, we took that as a sign to just enjoy our new pleasure quietly. Luckily for me, a few years later, I became a DeMarco. After that, my father didn’t complain about anything I did. As he put it, “One (daughter) down, two to go.”
Through it all, the lessons I learned were that the true meaning of any holiday is to enjoy the togetherness of family and loved ones and never give up on childhood dreams.
Laugh on. Peace out!
Lisa DeMarco is a columnist for Villages-News.com.
