I've been having a tough Christmas season. 2017 has been a tough year. I'm generally this perpetually hopeful person, and I'm also generally happy. I have a good life in so many ways, and I'm thankful. But I've had the Christmas blues of sorts this year. You could say I've been downright Grinchy.
We've had some tough months financially, and due to the instability in the health insurance market, our health insurance just went up so much that it's going to cost us more than our mortgage. We'll be able to swing it, but just barely. And, as frugal as we've learned to be, we're going to have to learn to be even more frugal.
And that frugality is starting with Christmas, only I didn't realize how much a "good" Christmas meant to me. I'm the first person to get on board and say that most of us need to simplify Christmas more. It's way too commercial, and we have to be reasonable.
Last year, our family took a big step toward simplifying Christmas by following the "something you want, something you need, something to share, and something to read" guideline. Each person gets one present for each category. I loved it. It made Christmas so special to me last year. It was smaller and just right for us.
But, this Christmas, due to some unexpected vet bills and having to pay our first health insurance payment, we ran out of funds before we could finish our "something you want, something you need" plans for everyone, and this left me feeling grim.
I felt so grim that I was feeling like a failure as a mom. I was worried that I couldn't make Christmas "good" for my family. I cried a lot and just felt so defeated. Then, one night I realized: who in the hell is deciding what a "good" Christmas looks like?
I realized I have these incredibly romantic notions about Christmas that revolve around my capitalistic outlook (As much as I try to fight it, it lurks in me down deep.) about what Christmas is "supposed" to be like.
But this realization didn't help my mood much. I think realizing how deeply brainwashed by capitalism I truly am just made things a little more grim.
When my husband asked me about hanging the homemade Christmas light decorations I made last year, I told him that I didn't want to hang them. They would make our electric bill go up, and I could maybe sell them instead.
Yes, that's how Grinchy I was.
I realized that I didn't like myself like this. I like my hopeful self better. I also realized we really needed a Christmas tree. I used to be the kind of person who put the Christmas tree up the day after Thanksgiving if I could. I figured it wasn't "legal" before that. I loved Christmas trees a lot.
Now, it was December 16, and we still didn't have our tree up. I realized I couldn't let my Grinchy self ruin Christmas for our youngest, so my husband and I started talking about getting a Christmas tree. I hoped a tree could lift my own spirits, and it would certainly be good for our son.
Normally, we try to support local tree farmers here in Maine and buy a fresh tree. But this year, money was so tight that we couldn't quite swing the $40 plus tip that we usually spend on a tree. We live in the Maine woods, so my husband said he could just chop one down.
We went back and forth on this. Both of us just read The Hidden Life of Trees and have fallen even more in love with trees than we were before. But my husband said he thought he saw a tree that was in a bad spot under a bigger tree and probably didn't have a good chance long term.
"It's a Charlie Brown tree, though," he said.
"I don't care. We need a tree, and we can totally make a Charlie Brown tree great," I said.
I was being really positive, and, somehow, I didn't mind having a Charlie Brown tree. I thought it would be cool to just have a tree from our woods. It may be a humble tree, but it would be free, and that was good.
So, when we could procrastinate this decision no more, my husband went out to cut down the tree. He went out in the early afternoon and was gone quite a while, much longer than I thought he would be. When he came back inside the house, I learned why.
When he went to cut the tree he had considered before, he realized it maybe had a chance to make it, so he couldn't cut it down. As he searched our little property, he said he couldn't find a single tree that he thought didn't have a chance, and he didn't have the heart to cut down a tree that had a chance. He kept going from tree to tree, unable to cut and with a nag to keep looking for something.
And then he saw it--a big fir tree that had come down last month in a bad wind storm. The top would be perfect, he thought, but he was worried it had been down too long. Would it take the water? Could it make it until Christmas?
The tree my husband brought to our house is absolutely the most beautiful tree I've ever seen. It's perfect in every way possible.
It's tall and thin but so full. It's magnificent and humble at the same time. And it still has tiny pine cones and the beginning of pine cones and lots of sap. It drank the water, seemingly just because we wanted it too so badly, and I felt my whole outlook change.
Not only is it a beautiful tree, my husband didn't have to cut down a tree, and it didn't cost us $40, which means $40 for groceries. And the tree had already passed, so we were making the most good use of Nature we could. (This is always our goal, though we don't always succeed as much as we would like.)
And, then, there was this point, and this point made this tree the most beautiful tree in the world to me:
This magnificent tree's time had passed. But we could honor it in our home and put beautiful lights and the ornaments we treasure on it. We get to celebrate a beautiful gift from Nature.
And thinking about this brings back my Christmas spirit.
I've been so worried about what's going on in the world. But I have to admit to myself that, right now, even though some of these things are really impacting me and my family, I can't do anymore about them than I'm already doing.
My husband and I will continue to work hard, grow more of our own food, and keep working on our frugality. And I just have this warm, safe, good sense that, if we do that, Nature will provide.
That's a good feeling to have this Christmas.