My Charlie Brown Christmas
By Georgia Hennessy Jackson, Squamish, Canada
‘Twas a few nights before Christmas, and there was still just enough daylight to see the dense brambles as they scratched and tore at my down jacket. The search for a Christmas tree wasn’t shaping up to be quite as romantic as I had expected. My partner and I had applied online for a free permit that entitled us to 'one Christmas tree’ from designated areas beneath the power lines, where the trees are regularly cleared anyway. Beneath the faint drone of the overhead wires, all we could see through the light west coast drizzle was a thorn-filled marshland slicing through the tall evergreens. Or was it that the wires seared the landscape, while the tangled mess of barbs merely hinted at the flourishing forest floor that used to be? Either way, the wires in my mind twisted and buzzed as I tried to figure out, Where are all the Christmas trees?
I gathered my thoughts and huddled further into my jacket against the cool valley air. A fleeting moment of unnecessary self-pity quickly turned to amusement as we attempted to extricate ourselves from the blackberry bushes that clung to us in a desperate parody of intimacy. I had to get home for an appointment; Jon offered to check one more area for trees. Shortly after, he called me on FaceTime to show me what he had found, but the reception was so poor it was just a green blur.
“I trust you to choose it honey, whichever one you like best!” I told him.
Later that afternoon, glasses fogging up as he entered our cosy apartment, I offered to give him a hand bringing the tree in.
He said, “That won’t be necessary.”
I jumped up from the sofa, eager to see our first Christmas tree since we had moved in together earlier that year, and almost immediately doubled over with laughter. With one hand, he held up a real-life version of the tree from ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’– small, lopsided, with one of its spindly branches broken completely in half. When it still refused to stand after he had nailed a couple of pieces of wood to the trunk, I propped it up in a bowl of water inside our bathroom garbage bin, wrapped a short string of fairy lights around its remaining branches, and decided to call it a day. This tree perfectly symbolized 2020 to me: unexpected, a bit crap, and yet still a source of joy.