Ever since I was a boy, I’ve loved Christmas trees. Problem is, I usually find a way to accidentally obliterate at least one Christmas tree every season.
Christmas trees are glorious things: tall and proud proclaiming a special holiday; shiny and glittery during the gloomy darkness of deep winter; green and healthy in a month of cold and isolation. Christmas ornaments tell a history of a family. Christmas lights can sum up different personalities (colored or white? blinking or steady?). Some people even have “decorator” trees with matching ribbon and ornaments . . . these are the same people who have matching “his and her” Cadillacs and ask you not to use the sea-shell shaped soap in their guest bathrooms.
My parents always provided a big tree. I always provided a big accident. My first Christmas is captured on film: cute little pictures of me trying to eat tinsel. When I was five, my parents returned from a Christmas Eve party to find the 82-year-old babysitter under the Christmas tree. Just last year I bought a 14-foot tree for my family and had to cut off five feet to get it in the house. The bottom of that sucker was really thick so I had to lop it off the top which made it look like a someone had put a giant bush in our living room–the branches were just as big at the top as they were at the bottom.
But for sheer drama, nothing beats my tenth Christmas. We had a frosted tree with big colored “fire-starter” lights. It sat proudly in the living room and blinked to the world outside. Thing is, I’ve never liked blinking lights. They make me dizzy. At ten years old, I thought they weren’t getting enough juice and that if I could only supply more power, they’d shine bright and steady.
So I decided to rewire our tree. Late one night I stealthily crept into the living room. It was dark except for the blinking tree. I began to quietly remove all of the Christmas lights. There were probably around 200, but I was determined to fix the blinkers. What a surprise for Mama and Daddy! I considered vacuuming all that white stuff off the tree too, but I figured the Electrolux would make too much noise.
Three hours later and only four broken ornaments to cover up, I had removed the lights and then put them back on the tree. Now you may say to yourself, “what does a little boy know about electrical engineering?” A-ha! I knew plenty. I knew that if one plug provided power enough to make lights blink, two plugs could really make some fancy Christmas lights.
That’s why I had to rewire the tree. Somehow, and I couldn’t tell you exactly how I did it, I “organized” those lights so that there was a plug at both ends. First I jammed the original plug into the wall. The Christmas tree began[ to blink and glow with a soft harmony befitting the merry season. Then I socketed the second plug.
What happened at that moment was spectacular, albeit slightly hazardous to living things. The lights did begin to get brighter and glow steady for a few seconds right before they exploded. In fact, they were the most beautiful Christmas lights I’d ever seen. Of course, the flashes of electricity that steadily progressed up the strand of lights with 200 small explosions were dramatic. And both Mama and Daddy seemed genuinely surprised, especially after the top of the tree caught fire and they had to rescue me from the falling ornaments and deadly fumes coming from the burning tree frosting (which was probably asbestos).
Nowadays, a lot of people have artificial trees. I scoff at the notion.
You just can’t buy memories like that Thomasville.
–Morgan Murphy