o_christmas_tree ovenbird I miss having a real Christmas tree. They introduce an element of chaos into the holidays. Whenever you bring something alive into your home there’s always a chance for catastrophe, especially when that thing is barely clinging to life, having been sawn away from its roots. A Christmas tree is experiencing its last faltering gasps and that means it no longer has any fucks to give, and it will live loudly until every needle falls from its body. Your job is to keep it hydrated enough that it doesn’t succumb to spontaneous combustion. This is harder than it sounds. You will also be responsible for vacuuming up evidence of its decay, because death isn’t a thing we like to confront over the holidays. I can’t have a real Christmas tree anymore because my husband is allergic to the mold they harbour. As soon as you bring them inside that mold springs to life and starts floating around and multiplying and creating a toxic hellscape for those with sensitive lungs. One year the tree fell over and mold spores went everywhere and my husband thought he was dying. We bought a fake tree on boxing day that year and have never looked back. One of the last years I had a real tree also resulted in the most gothic of disasters. We cut down the tree ourselves that year at one of those fancy Christmas tree lots that let you roast marshmallows over a fire and have hot chocolate while you pretend to be lumberjacks. It was a beautiful tree. We tied it to our car and brought it home. We set it up in the living room and put on the lights and decorations. We admired it from the vantage point of our couch. We made black russians and toasted our success. We went to bed. In the morning I came downstairs and noticed something was a bit off about the tree. It looked…dusty? I went to take a closer look. My tree was covered in spider webs. COVERED! There must have been at least two dozen webs. I guess the tree was full of dormant spiders. When we brought it into the warmth of the house they woke up hungry and got to work making webs to catch some dinner. If I had been a member of the Addams Family I would have been thrilled by this turn of events. As a depressed mom trying to make Christmas magical I was less thrilled. I painstakingly vacuumed the webs and spiders off my tree because as much as I appreciate spiders, they don’t exactly fit the holiday decor. But as much as real trees are a giant pain, I miss having one. I miss the smell of pine, that pungent scent of resin, the ceremony involved in choosing just the right one, the surprise of it, each tree different from the one before. My artificial tree never changes. It’s quiet and unchanging. It is very much not alive. It possesses no flaws that provide a foothold for love to climb to great heights. It does its job but without any nuance. I’d rather have something wild. I would rather have something full of spiders and tumult than the static simulacra in my living room. I want to honour what exists at the edge of death because there is no joy in the thing that can never die. 251216 what's it to you? who go blather from