By NICOLE CARTRETTE
Staff Writer

My husband and I put up our fake Christmas tree not long ago.

It’s one of those pre-lit ones that you conveniently stick together in five minutes and spend an hour trying to hook the seven different strands of lights together the right way.

It’s less exhausting than taking on a real tree. There is no making sure the lights are evenly wrapped around the sucker only to find that your light scheme resembles something that a kindergartener put together.

No watering. No falling needles. Our artificial tree has its advantages.

But because of those advantages, it lacks a lot of character – the kind of character that isn’t thrown together in a factory somewhere and definitely doesn’t come in a box.

I know a thing or two about trees with character - the kind of character that comes from being found on a hillside somewhere literally - out in the woods.

I was in middle school before my grandparents finally bought an artificial tree.

We grandkids loved the excitement and awe that comes with a real tree about as much as my grandparents loved stirring up that excitement, not to mention the suspense of not knowing what you were going to get until it was in the door.

I wonder now if we were too young to notice my Grandpa’s true mission was to chop down the first tree he saw that would do.

I have likely seen my fair share of lopsided-looking, bushy Christmas trees that Grandpa chopped down in 20-degree weather.

In freezing temperatures anything is “perfect” that will get you back home and make you warm, I guess.

On the other hand, I wonder if in choosing a tree, Grandpa was exercising his subtle sense of humor in a not-so-subtle way.

Perhaps he enjoyed listening to us kids defend the honor and sheer magnificence of such a tree.

“Gene, its crooked,” I can hear my grandmother tell him. “Is this the only one you could find?” she would say.
“It’s the best,” we kids would shout in protest, believing it.

Sometimes it was a real challenge to coax the fat tree through a narrow doorway.

It was work, the kind of work that makes you proud no matter the outcome.

There is something elegant about dainty, clear, bright lights on a tree. So there was no room for such things on our eclectic masterpiece.

Only bright, bold, multicolored lights in an excessive amount would do. There is just something about that kind of display that tickles a 6-year-old’s fancy in ways clear lights can’t.

They are more fun, more daring and just shout, “Look at me and be amazed.”

And amazing it was – amazing that year after year my grandma allowed such a ruckus again and again.

Amazing that short, skinny, fat, tall, short and odd trees of all kinds were treasures to us, as was the process of putting it all together.

My cookie cutter tree at home will never come with a great story about how it was wrestled out of the woods and it won’t ever smell like freshly cut pine.

What it lacks in realness it will make up for in decoration.

I am unable to part with decades’ worth of ornaments, some older than I am. I simply can’t resist the urge to include them year after year. Silver, gold, red, green, blue, fluffy, homemade, fancy – it all goes on the tree.

Even the three picture ornaments my brother gave us one year as a joke (with his own pictures in them) go on the tree along with a mix of other family pictures that might otherwise spend most of their life inside the pages of a boring photo album.

Making it onto the tree is like making it on Broadway for life (well, sort of).

While matching ornaments and decoration of one or two coordinating shades is enticing, they don’t have much to say.

Despite the age difference, style and color, the misfit ornaments all come together to put on a display that’s about more than looks.

It’s about memories.

There’s nothing like a Christmas tree that tells a story –the kind with uneven branches that shows off tattered ornaments decades old and defies the ideal of the cookie-cutter tree.

Yes, there is something beautiful about even an ugly tree.

An ugly tree makes for a beautiful Christmas – Grandpa knew that and looking back now I see that too.