by Beth Goodman

Disclaimers: None whatsoever. Oh, maybe a spew alert.

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Copyright © 2004 by Beth Goodman. All Rights Reserved.

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Granny was never a big fan of Christmas, and that was something I could never understand as a child. To me, the absolute most magical time of the year was Christmas, especially Christmas Day when we would have a big family gathering at various cousins' homes. One year we were supposed to have the party at our house, and I was wound up like a top for it, but then my cousin Bonnie Beth went into labor with her daughter Jamie and that was that. I was devastated about Christmas, but I did get to go to the hospital to meet Jamie, so that was okay.

I loved everything about Christmas from my toddlerhood on. I particularly loved Christmas music, and the old carols were a major favorite. In the middle of summer I used to con Granny into putting the Christmas records on and I would crank up the volume as far as she would let me, and with her failing hearing, I got it pretty loud. Once the music was playing, and the phonograph cabinet set to repeat, I would get on my hobby horse, one of the super cool ones suspended from a steel frame by heavy duty springs, and sing at the top of my lungs and rock back and forth until I just about scrambled my brains. (Come to think of it, that might explain a few things...)

There has always been something in my nature that thrives on returning to things I enjoy, I read the same books over and over again to revisit old friends, I will watch a favorite movie three times in a row, just to enjoy the feelings it evokes. I even tend to eat the same thing repeatedly. I know one year when I was little, all I wanted all summer long was tuna fish sandwiches or peanut butter sandwiches, always made the same way with the same ingredients. I don't think Granny ate either tuna or peanut butter for a couple of years after that -- I don't think she was prone to repeats like I am.

I've often considered her tolerance of the Christmas music as an indicator of her love for me. It made her nuts, and she'd cut me off eventually, but even taking the deafness into account, she sure let me wallow in it 365 days a year. I still listen to those old albums every now and again, but now I sit in my chair and rock, and I enjoy the trip back to my childhood.

Granny had no desire to decorate in any fashion for Christmas. In fact, her idea of wrapping a Christmas present was taping the bag it came in shut with masking tape. (With me, duck tape fixes everything, but Granny was a masking tape commando.) When I got older I would actually wrap her presents to me myself, bag, masking tape and all, so they would look right for the occasion.

The minute Thanksgiving rolled around I wanted to decorate anything that didn't move. Granny ignored me. Mom always set up a spectacular tree at her place, with a great big Nativity set and a whole bunch of other stuff to boot. I would always help with the decorations at Mom's, and Mom sure tried to get Granny involved too-- but Granny had her number. Mom is very particular about her Christmas tree, and it needs to reflect a nice balance of weight and color. She would even cut spare branches off the bottom and then drill holes in the trunk to attatch them elsewhere to fill in bare spots. The finishing touch was always tons of tinsel, carefully strung a few strands at a time until the tree sparkled like stars on the water. I remember one year, Mom set Granny up with a box of tinsel and pointed her at the tree to help decorate. Granny emptied the entire box in one handful and dumped it all on the nearest branch. Mom never asked her to help again -- but Granny was always happy to watch and tell us when we missed a spot -- she could be a sneaky old woman.

Granny and I never had a Christmas tree, in part because we didn't actually spend Christmas at our house, but also because we couldn't really afford one. Besides, it would have been a neat trick for the retiree and the preschooler to get a pine tree home on the bus. After I insisted on decorating the potted plants one year, my Aunt Irene gave us a small artificial tree. Of course, I thought it was too small, being only about 3 feet in height, so I commandeered the dining table and set it up on top. We had to eat off of TV trays for weeks.

When I was older, and I received my first actual paycheck, I bought us a 6-foot, top of the line, artificial tree and all the trimmings to go on it. I even put tinsel on it knowing full well that I was going to have to pick it off, strand by strand, when the tree came down after Christmas. It was an awesome tree -- even if it did take over half the living room.

I knew better than to let Granny help me trim the tree, so my friend Kathy came and helped while the Christmas music played at full blast. Granny sat and pondered the tree for a while after we had it assembled and decorated, and then she hopped up out of her chair and headed out the back door.

Now I'm afraid that I am terminally curious, so I followed her to see what she was up to.

Her first stop was the shed, where she wrestled with the sliding aluminum doors that always stuck, and made these cool booming noises when you tried to open them. Once inside, she began rooting around in an old chest of drawers we kept in there to serve as a toolbox. Out she came with the saw in hand and off she stomped to the sparse baby pine tree we had growing in the back yard. She knelt down in the snow, blindly reached underneath the tree, and hacked off two branches as I stood there perplexed.

She went back into the shed to put the saw away, and then Granny and her greenery headed into the house. A stop at the junk drawer retrieved the hammer and then a trip through the coffee can of parts produced a massive three-inch nail. She took the two branches, held them together to form an "X" and nailed 'em straight into the wall. (Granny never looked for the studs in the walls, or considered using any kind of an anchor, her philosophy was a big enough nail could hold a life size portrait on to tissue paper. Our pictures fell down a lot.)

I stood there staring at her, completely mystified by this voodoo-like ritual. Was she trying to appease the pine tree gods for allowing me to construct a plastic mockery in the house? Was she overwhelmed by the Christmas spirit and decided to literally "deck the halls with boughs?" Nope. She had a perfectly logical reason for nailing two ratty looking tree branches with a big old nail that left a hole that was mistaken for years to come as a fly on the wall.

"It didn't smell like Christmas."

Oh, well, that's all right then. Good Lord, the Christmas carols must have finally pushed her round the bend because the woman was completely insane.

By the next day the needles had all fallen off the branches, and had taken up permanent residence in the braided rug. In fact, they left with the rug several years later. So, like spent porcupines they hung there naked, as if they were some strange grave marker left by savages.

So, did it smell like Christmas, you ask?

Heck, no. It was winter and the sap from the branches -- which is what makes the smell -- had already receded deep into the tree's trunk to wait for spring. It's probably just as well, otherwise we would have had sticky sap stains to go with the hole in the wall.

Take me to Life With Granny 8...

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