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Toilet brushes, traditions and mutating trees
The fake versus real argument started early in our marriage.
A neurotic fear of fire, three babies in four years and a leaking tree stand combined to create the perfect reason for me to buy a fake tree from Frank’s the day after Christmas.
Yep, I’m a fake Christmas tree person.
I know, gasp, right?
That's what my poor husband did.
But honestly, we can’t even keep a guinea pig watered, let alone a tree destined for the wood chipper.
The other day, my husband, looking quite forlorn, said, “I miss having a real tree.”
“Light a pine scented candle,” I said.
My smug satisfaction with our 6-year-old fake tree was deflated a little last week, when I learned a toilet brush company invented them. Yes, in the 1930s the Addis Brush Company transformed their bowel, I mean, bowl cleaners into giant idols of the Christmas season.
A toilet brush is a toilet brush, no matter how you decorate it.
Yet I was jealous as a co-worker spoke of her 1970s aluminum, fully silver variety, complete with twirling lights at the base which shine up through the branches, giving it the look of being . . . well . . . on fire. Imagine it: The Northern lights in your own living room.
“People pay hundreds for trees like that in those pot and barrel catalogs now,” I said.
The real versus fake tree debate is a hot one. Tree farmers say they're starving and environmentalists complain about the eventual deposit of giant toilet brushes in landfills. The National Christmas Tree Association has a Web site featuring an online game: Attack of the Mutant Fake Trees. The game description reads, “The artificial trees have mutated and are sucking the spirit out of Christmas. Help the elf beat these bad guys by hitting them with snow balls!”
Alas, I’m not interested in the sleigh full of fake-versus-real arguments. Everyone wants to argue about something, and this topic, in particular, is just a distraction from the meaning of the season.
Because it’s not a pine tree famine, the environment or toilet brush companies we’re arguing about.
It’s not who’s hosting the family gathering, who’s coming to the family gathering or who inherits the faded, light-up Santa in the front yard.
Behind these arguments lurks fear. Fear of new traditions erasing old ones. Fear of the passage of time and generations.
But maintaining dilapidated traditions won’t provide the perennial, evergreen comfort we crave.
Neither will the star upon our highest, PVC boughs.
The only place I’ve ever found unceasing hope and joy is in the nativity (and not the one on grandma’s mantel).
In the meantime, if you find yourself stuck in the real-versus-fake debate, go with whatever works best for you.
If you get jittery thinking about giant toilet brushes mutating and arising from the depths of landfills to slay you and the polar bears, by all means get a real tree.
If a real tree keeps you awake all night with obsessive compulsive thoughts about your house burning down, by all means get a fake tree.
Just remember to extinguish all the pine scented candles before settling down in your kerchiefs and caps.
Amy Sorrells is a Zionsville resident and writer working on her first book. E-mail Amy at aksorrells@gmail.com.
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