In February 2024 this website crashed for no apparent reason. Despite using professionals at GoDaddy.com it was impossible to restore anything after October 2021 (over 100 posts). I do have many of those post in draft form (no final edit or photos) and I have decided to repost them in that manner. I apologize for typos and other errors. How do I feel about losing all of my original work? Life goes on.

Dr. Julie is the harbinger of Christmas cheer in Kunaland, with her first volley being the Christmas music that commences on Black Friday and plays in a continuous loop until the big day is over. She has a massive collection of Christmas CDs, which she oddly stores in our laundry room post season. I must admit that I have contributed to this collection in Christmas pasts, often finding one or two discs each season suitable as stocking stuffer fare. For those younger than 40, a CD is an former state-of-the-art device that stores digitally encoded music. Most have been destroyed or lost during the great Spotify war (the format war to end all format wars). A few remain among us old-guard types. Individuals clinging to the false belief that things were better in the old days.

Most of us in Kunaland enjoy this injection of Christmas cheer, at least for the first few weeks. I admit that there are only a finite number of times that I can rock around the Christmas tree and have a happy holiday. Thankfully, that inflection point is close to the end of the season. Just as I have had enough, it is time to take down the decorations and embrace the brutal reality that we call January in the upper Midwest.

Music is just the start of Julie’s efforts, which also include Christmas activities and, of course, the tree. My prior work life was replete with insane work hours, so Julie would always drag our artificial bush from the basement and set it up so the family could decorate it. This task has slowly shifted to me as a reward for my status as a retiree. In turn, I have shifted it to the entire family as my kids, with their supple bodies,  are now more suitable crawl space explorers.  

And so it was this season. Julie started the conversation a few weeks ago. “We need to get the tree up….We need to get the tree up…We need to get the tree up!” Finally, we got the tree up. Since her surgery, Julie’s ambulation has been… umm, compromised. “Don’t do anything; we will do it. Sit back and relax,” I said. However, she associates the season with many things, including reclaiming mildewy Christmas boxes from our crawl space. She needed to liberate at least a few of them. Naturally, I contributed, but the kids did the lion’s share of relocation work this year.  

I bought our fake tree decades ago. At the time, it was the latest in fake tree construction with odd hanging branches that clipped into a skirt base. Once assembled, a top completed the illusions in all its artificial goodness. At the end of the holiday, we place the tree into a custom tree body bag, and it transitions from a position of significance to a piece of basement clutter. Such is its life. Today a hero, tomorrow a discard.

Our tree’s days are numbered. Long ago, we lost several of the plug-in branches, which we craftily hid from the outside world by placing the bare parts towards the corner of the room. Don’t even get me started about the fake needles that I’ll still be vacuuming up in August. However, the biggest issue is that our tree no longer looks like a tree. There is only so much branch fluffing that one can do.

With that said, I wasn’t about to go out last Sunday night to buy a new one. This tree would have to do until I could find an excellent post-Christmas bargain. Our fix was simple: cover the tree with enough decoration so no one would know that our tree resembled a used green pipe cleaner.

Christmas means many different things to different people. It is the day to celebrate the birth of Christ, despite the reality that Jesus was born in the spring. Others focus on Santa Christmas, still others holiday parties, and for some, Christmas represents the agony of aloneness, or the sting of credit card debt.

Here in Kunaland, we do a little of this and that, but one of our favorite things is decorating the tree as a family.

I already mentioned that our fake bush is in sorry condition, but I’m here to inform you that our decorations don’t fare much better. However, we have no intention of ever changing this latter category. There will be no Swarovski crystal or Disney-themed trees in our future. Each of our ornaments tells a story. Torn, worn, faded, it makes no difference to us. Every decoration has a place of honor on our tree. Gently placed, then carefully removed and packed away for the next season in a solid Rubbermaid box. Our old Christmas tree is the frame that holds these cherished objects, some of which I will share with you today.