No, it’s not the light, our tree is purple.

Christmas Trees are a very personal thing.  I have friends who pop up at the crack of dawn the day after Thanksgiving to be one of the first let into the tree farm to chop down their own tree.  I have other friends who are so allergic to pine that a real needle would never be allowed through the door.  My own family stopped allowing real trees when I was twelve.  My Dad decided burning the whole thing after Christmas in our double-sided fireplace was a good idea.  Did I mention we had a wood shingled roof?  Did I mention that sucker was dry as a bone?  Bright red pine needles were popping everywhere on the carpet with my Mom madly stomping them out.  Attached to every stomp was a four-letter word directed at my father.  The next day my Mom bought a $300 fake tree and that was the end of Dad’s fun with the fireplace.    I have another friend whose family always got a flocked tree.  My 7 year old self thought that was the ultimate.  A tree that looked covered in snow, right in the living room.   I even saw one of those crazy first generation silver white bottlebrush looking trees once in Bowie.  But just like Mr. Pine and his purple house, I had never seen a purple Christmas tree until we bought one.

It all started the year we realized we would be spending Christmas in London.  We had packed up the kids and 6 suitcases on the first day of September and thought we would be home by Thanksgiving.  But, as luck would have it, John’s contract was extended through January, then February, and then March.  You get the picture.  This meant we would be spending Christmas in our cozy flat on Monk Street.  Christmas in London is pretty amazing.  It really looks like those little villages people put on their mantles but of course a lot bigger.  Our flat on the other hand was looking rather pitiful in the Christmas cheer department.  What we really needed was a tree.  But, we had no car and the idea of sweet-talking a cab driver into letting us haul a tree on or in his cab was about as likely as asking for a ride to the moon.  Option B was the Tube.   Instead of irritating one cab driver we could go for half of central London.  We had practically given up when John called me one evening on his way home from the office.  This was unusual because his commute was about a four block walk.  I picked up the phone.  “What are you doing?” John asked.  “OH, you know, usual evening stuff, I am giving the kids a bath.”  “Well,” he says, “get them out, get them dressed, and meet me downstairs at the weird store with faucets and guitars.  I may have found us a tree.”

The building we were in had a very handy little grocery store if you walked to the right and if you walked to the left there was a strange place that had really beautiful bathroom faucets and electric guitars in every wild color you could imagine.  Apparently during the Christmas season they added trees in every wild color you could imagine.  Now came the hard part, which wild color to choose.  They had black, orange, salmon, purple, red and yellow.  I think we might have asked about green to which the arty Asian woman who ran the store gave us a look like we were going for boloney over pate.  Right away we ruled out the black.  I have heard these look very chic all done up but we are not chic people.  The orange might be fun in Florida, the salmon was actually kind of sickly, the yellow was very…..yellow and the red simply did not have two little chubby fingers from two little girls pointing at it madly.  The purple one did.  It was settled.  For the low low price of 20 pounds, we had just purchased a purple tree.  We had to go to the warehouse to get it.  Apparently the warehouse was more like a storage room and no more than 20 feet from the front door of our building.  It came packaged in a box that was easier to manage than a day’s worth of groceries.    

It is amazing how a small purple tree with lights, chopsticks and toys on it can transform a room into Christmas.  And what an amazing Christmas it was.  We walked to Trafalgar Square and listened to carolers under the giant Norwegian Spruce.  We took the kids to see the Pantomime The Snowman.    We rode rides and bought paper stars at the Hyde Park Christmas Market.  We ate Christmas dinner at a fancy restaurant with crowns on our heads and I tried real Christmas pudding (once was enough).  We sat in our flat on Christmas day, by the tree watching the children play and looking out of our wall of windows at the city.  It was a Christmas to remember always. 

Months later, when it was time to leave London for good, our little purple tree put us over on the items we could bring back on the plane.  It was going to cost us a lot more than the 20 pounds we paid for it so we had to leave it behind.  Fortunately, by that time we had really good friends who kept our tree until John was able to retrieve it. 

Since that year, the purple tree has been part of our Christmas.  It is a reminder of a very special year but more than that; it is a reminder that every year is as special as you make it.  We have kept the tradition of hanging crazy things on the tree, just like the year we were short on real ornaments.  This year we have a page filled with stickers from Lauren’s school achievements, three circles of cheerios representing solids, liquids and gas from Helen’s science class.  There is a pair of Elvis glasses and normally, underneath one naughty cat who thinks that this purple tree is perfect camouflage.  Sorry Mr. Farkus, had you been able to stick your paw in and vote, I am sure you would have gone with the orange.