The Year Without a Christmas Tree

This is the Christmas without a Christmas tree--but it's a good, good thing.

For several years I haven't wanted a big ol' honking Christmas tree in our very small living-room. All year long, it is all I can do to fit our necessary furniture into this space. About six times a year I try shifting everything around in hopes of a more functional, attractive look, and nothing ever helps.  Each piece of furniture seems too big for the room, because each piece IS.

The room is well-loved and well-used, but is the most challenging for workability. It's an old farmhouse, but a modest one, built by humble immigrants long ago who needed to throw together a dwelling before the snow flew.

To throw a big ol' honking Christmas tree in there each December has always driven me crazy-nuts. Despite my admiration for beautifully decorated houses at the holidays, for our own home I have been Scrooge-like in the embellishment department.

It is only for my grown daughter that I have even messed with this "problem." If not for her it would long ago have been a sweet little tabletop tree--and an artificial one at that. It would have been some greenery and some pine cones, and red cardinal birds, of the resin sort and just a few.

This modest extent of decorating I could embrace with the utmost cheer and enthusiasm, but instead each year I wrestle with a "big one." I dress it up and there it towers the room further and blatantly into impossibly small.

My daughter has persistently asked this of me, and why don't I just say NO?

How could I? If my living-room has seemed impossibly small, hers trumps mine for that. Hers is half the size of mine, but this didn't matter when it was just she and her little girl. The two found their little two-bedroom bungalow cozy and delightful and perfectly sensible in size for an up-to-the-ceiling Christmas tree plus all the trimmings.

For some years they trudged through the woods of a "cut-your-own" farm and dressed their living-room to the nines in holiday paraphernalia.

Then one year my daughter "found someone"  and got married. Soon, a recliner for the masculine persuasion was plopped right smack dab where the Christmas tree should go. When December arrived and there wasn't room for both the tree AND the man, she decided not to bump the man. Later, when babies (and baby paraphernalia) added to the congestion she sadly (but also happily) concluded her Christmas tree days were over in that house.

The thing to do then, for the children's sake (it's always for the children's sake) was to beg Mom to keep the tradition of a big Christmas in HER living-room--a place where the little ones spend a lot of time and even open (some of) their Christmas presents in on the big day.

Again--how could I say no?

I couldn't and I didn't, although each year I touched on it and each year she un-touched me on it.

It isn't that my daughter hasn't wanted or tried to get a bigger living-room. For over two years she and her spouse have done all they feel capable of to change things up for space in the house she bought several years ago as a single mom with one child. With a hubby and toddlers now (as well as our older granddaughter), and only two bedrooms to split between them all, well, you can imagine.

"Upside-down" in a mortgage often means "upside-down" in the home life, too. This new reality for lots of families presents lots of challenges much more serious than where to put a Christmas tree at Christmas time.

Where to put the babies might be one, or where to put grown kids who need to "come home" might be another.  Another one might be where to put Mom or Dad or both, when everyone is pooling together resources to manage expenses and keep a comfortable roof overhead.

A recent NBC news segment addressed the growing numbers of multi-generational families living under one roof, "much the way it used to be."

Not all good and not all bad--but the reasons for it seem to be usually from not-the-best circumstances. In general, choices are limited and everyone struggles to find the best answers within their means.

Some years ago my daughter's grandmother (my mother-in-law) lived in "not-the-best" circumstances. She had plenty by way of real estate house value (before the bubble burst) but not enough money to meet her daily needs. Nothing any of us said could make her sell while the selling was good and she was alive to enjoy it. When she passed, the money that could have bettered her life went instead to her children.

She meant for this to happen, and her "children" also meant her grandchildren, we are sure. She threw the ball into our court, and when that happens, you gotta play ball.

Also for sure "playing ball" wears down a safety net. But life is all about the kids and the grand-kids, so this year it looks like (God willing) the grand-kids are having their own "big ol' honking" Christmas tree in their own bigger living room. (And I am finally doing my tabletop tree!) There is a fireplace to hang their stockings from, and a mantle to display a lighted Christmas village across. The family is over-the-moon happy, and they're not counting their lucky stars.

They are counting their blessings.