December 2025 "Christmas: A Lesson in Simplicity" by Paula Rawlings

The holidays were a one-Christmas-tree ordeal when I was a kid. My brothers would trudge through the dry snow in their bunny boots and snow shoes, I would trail behind, and together we would pick a tree, but the trees we chose were not plushy farm-grown varieties like the Douglas Fir, White Spruce, or Scotch Pine. No, the trees we picked grew in the woods around our house and had levels, like those tiered cookie trays at Christmas parties, and their branches didn’t arrange themselves along the trunk to form an upside-down cone. The top branches wanted to reach as far as the low branches, equality and all that, creating more of a cylinder. When we (scratch that) my brothers would cut down the tree and carry it home, they would drop it in the tree stand and secure it to the walls with a string in the mud room, giving it a moment to thaw. The tops were laden with marbles. Tight, tiny bundled pinecones. The limbs, from top to bottom, touched the wall, and each year, we sawed off the top so the angel could fit.

Someone would drag out the one box of Christmas decorations and begin hanging the 13 stockings on the knobs of the bifold closet doors, several doubling up. Meanwhile, the tree dripped melting snow and ice on the linoleum, filling the mudroom with the scent of sap, traveling down the hall to the great room, and masking the smell of cigarette smoke, body odor, and fried Moose meat. After the tree finished weeping, my brothers would carry it to the only place we ever put a Christmas tree: between the two windows on the southwest side of the house, where the sun rose and where we could see visitors drive up the driveway.

I’m sure I put an ornament or two on the tree, at least the one with my picture on it, but many hands made light work of so few decorations on such a large tree. The string of colored lights was stage lighting for the various levels of branches. I would lie under the tree, looking up, wishing I were as small as my Barbie so I could climb to the top. I would ask one of my brothers to pick me up so my Barbie could fly to the top and sleep there for the night. If they were feeling extra nice or wanted to show off their muscles, they would. As I lay in bed, I imagined her looking down on my parents as they ate hoarded Christmas candy and watched David Letterman watch Paul Shaffer save Christmas.

Christmas should be simple. Gifts are great, but savoring the moments leading up to Christmas is what makes it sweet. Spending time with family, decorating, making cookies, walking through the mall, and watching movies together are some of my favorite ways to relish the approach of Christmas. Spending money is not a necessity. Filling every room with Christmas decorations is expensive and time-consuming. Eating candy till I’m sick in the head isn’t required. Sending cards to every name listed on my phone never happens. It’s nice to simply turn out all the lights, burn a few candles, listen to the rain fall against the roof as the clouds burst out in laughter at my stupid jokes.