I Am So Popular: Oh Christmas Tree!

Their circumstances were not lack of finances. Instead, work had taken one parent out of the country and a death in the family had taken the other parent out of town. It was just days before the 25th and the odds of the parental units getting back in time to hunt down and erect a dead, tinsel-covered evergreen were slim-to-none. It was my job, I decided then, to take this matter into my own hands.

As it happened, I was being visited by my French friend who shared my cynicism about the unrealistic expectations of the holiday. Combined, our bad attitudes could’ve shriveled Santa’s nuts with just a glance. We were cranky, and our crankiness united us.

I announced to her that we were going to find a Christmas tree for my little friends. She stared at me in horrific disbelief. “Zees is insane!” she said.

Nonetheless, I persuaded her to get in my car, an ’88 beater Subaru wagon, and off we set through the mean streets of Austin, lit cigarettes dangling from our sneer-curled lips, bemoaning the seasonal bullshit while ironically taking part in that very thing.

There were no Christmas trees to be found at that late date. The previously bustling tree lots were empty and closed. We stopped at the Optimist Club lot on Lamar. Nothing. We drove further south. Nothing. An hour passed, maybe two, as Frenchy grew more vocal in her disdain and smoke clouded the car’s interior.

I proposed that perhaps we should try the Optimist lot one more time, and take a close look in the trash. “Pffffft,” exhaled Frenchy, dismissively. But she was my captive. Sure enough, scrutiny revealed a few scraggly “trees” waiting to be pulped for mulch. “Zees one,” said my friend, pointing to a bald three-footer. I countered, “No, THIS one,” and loaded up a six-footer into the back of the car, its top hanging out the back of the hatch, its sticky trunk between us, the entire over-dry thing threatening to ignite if one of us accidentally let a cigarette ember fall upon it.

We got that tree to its destination, and left it out back to be discovered by the kids, as if Santa himself had dropped it off. Heartwarming, right? But this is not the end of the story.

That year, my fight-the-suicidal-urges-of-Christmas found me hosting an open house on the 25th, inviting over all comers—fellow holiday-haters, the Jews, those estranged from their bio-families, like the alcoholic dude from my yoga class who showed up drunk with his equally wasted roommates, toting a couple of big brown bags full of cheap booze, and homemade “pot pills” for all. Late that night, as things were winding down, there was a knock at the door.

What a coincidence! The family that had been on the receiving end of that last-minute tree. It became clear, pretty quickly, that the parents had had more than a few nips of ye olde eggnog. One of them said, “You got us that tree, didn’t you?” To which I replied, in a cheerfully sarcastic voice intended to suggest I was telling the opposite of the truth, “Tree? What tree? Not me!”

The sarcasm was lost and this parent took me at my word, launching into a slurry commentary that went like this. “You didn’t? Well somebody did. You should see it. What a piece of SHIT! That’s the worst tree I ever saw in my life. It got needles all over the place. Horrible.”

It took every ounce of energy I possessed to keep from bursting out laughing, as I found myself entrenched in a most perverse real life O. Henry story. I let the disappointed parent go on. And on. Honestly, the amusement factor was priceless. For as much as I had failed to save the family’s Christmas surely this commentary had rescued mine.

O Tannebaum Part II

A few years ago, I got an urgent phone call from a former teacher of my son’s. She told me that friends of hers were in trouble and after praying to God all night to know the best way to help them, God had answered her and told her to call me. Curious that I don’t believe in God but apparently he believes in me. Such flattery, I suppose, is what hooked me.

The teacher told me that a young mother in her church had been suddenly widowed, her husband dying under vague circumstances. In addition to his widow, he left behind four children and no money. The mortgage was in arrears, the utilities about to be cut off, and there was no money for the funeral, let alone Christmas. Though I had no money of my own to kick in, I do happen to be the president of the Office of Good Deeds, a loosely organized group I call on from time-to-time to help those in need.

Typically OGD serves in deeds, not cash. But this case was urgent. I put the word out and the donations poured in—money, groceries, clothes, gifts. These I handed off to my son’s teacher who in turn delivered them, leaving me, as I preferred, anonymous. But then, inexplicably, when I called to tell her that someone had donated a tree and some toys, I was met with radio silence. She fell off the map. Later I’d learn she’d fallen ill. For the moment, all I knew was Christmas was days away, I had no phone number for the widow, just an address, and there was that tree, those gifts, in my car.

I had to do something.

Here I must stop and tell you that the family I was helping happened to be black. And I must add that I was raised in a racist town by a racist father. And that I have spent my life over-compensating, to the point that I understand that when one goes overboard trying to make up for a parent’s racism, one can oneself come across as racist in a different way.

This all went through my mind as I drove to the widow’s home. Was I going to look like some condescending, pity-filled white lady? I winced at the thought. My discomfort was compounded by my holiday hatred and the fact that I don’t like knocking on anyone’s door without calling first, not even close friends. Would this grieving woman even open her door to a stranger? And what if she slammed it in my face?

My blood pressure was through the roof by the time I arrived, my stomach in a thousand knots. Timidly I put knuckles to wood, shrunk into my anxiety-riddled self.

A tiny woman opened the door. I stuttered out my name. She had no idea who I was. I mentioned I was a friend of her friend. “Come in,” she said, very softly. I stuttered some more. “There’s a tree and some gifts in the car,” I said.

She said she’d send out a visiting friend to haul those in. I followed her, stepped into her little house, tried to imagine what it must be like for her trying to hold it together for her kids in the face of her husband’s death and all those mounting bills.

The kids just stared at me, unclear on what might possibly be going on. Their mother explained that I’d come by with a tree.

And then a little voice piped up, “Is that Santa’s helper, mom?”

At that point in my life, I had been called many things, good and bad. But not once in over forty years had I ever, ever been mistaken for one of the Jolly Old Elf’s minions.

I misted up on the drive home. I was not suddenly rescued from my own disdain for the holidays. But I was relieved that my efforts to step outside of my own misery and spread a little cheer were not met with suspicion or rejection. The gracious widow had allowed me in, and in the eyes of the children my mistaken identity remained intact. For just a moment, I’d been an elf. Don’t tell anyone, but I confess that felt pretty darn good.

Spike Gillespie blogs at KnitBuzz and spikeg.com. She hopes you’ll sign up for her Jan/Feb writing workshops. This is her last column of the year as she will be holing up to avoid the holidays. She will be back in 2011.