Unexpected part of Yuletide

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

I called it my Protestant tree because we bought it at the Episcopal church instead of at the Knights of Columbus and because a few hours after I'd decorated it, with strung popcorn and cranberries and hand rolled-gingerbread men and frosted cookie stars and angels, the tree fell, crashing to the floor.

I wailed and moaned because never before had I gone to such effort for a tree. Never before had I strung cranberries or popcorn, or even sugar cookies. The effort was entirely new.

This was to have been my Good Housekeeping Christmas. From soup to nuts, to cookie decorations, to a pine-cone wreath and home-made gifts, this was to have been the perfect holiday.

The tree's falling was the first blow.

"It fell because it was a Protestant tree," I announced to my husband.

"It fell because it was sitting in a Catholic tree stand," he said to me.

He was joking. I was not.

I figured that God was still getting used to the idea that I'd married a Protestant and the tree had pushed Him over the edge. My husband figured I was nuts.

"You're pushing me over the edge," he said. And indeed I was.

For a month I'd been working obsessively on a felt Christmas scene. It was poster size and full of two-inch people skating on a six-inch lake, sledding on a beveled hill, walking past a steepled church and a brick schoolhouse and a community of tiny, decorated homes.

I worked on that thing day and night from Halloween to the first week of December. I, who was sent to the nurses' office when the art teacher came so I wouldn't embarrass the class; I who got "d's" in coloring felt like Picasso. Mine was an awesome creation.

Or so I believed.

"What's that kangaroo doing on the lake, Mommy?" my son, who was 4, asked when the picture was finished and hung.

"It's not a kangaroo," I said. "It's a lady holding a bag."

"It looks like a kangaroo to me," he said, seeing me through my art teacher's eyes.

I learned my lesson and sought help for the pine-cone wreath. A friend and I drove to the Cape to collect cones on a beautiful fall day, packing lunch for our children and few extra sweatshirts in case it got cold.

It did. The kids ate in the car while we climbed trees in search of four-inch pine cones. This was the easy part. Good Housekeeping failed to mention that when pine cones are forced to become Christmas decorations they revolt. They nip your fingers. They cut your hands to shreds. Glue guns leap to their defense, burning and sticking everything except the pine cones.

With bandaged hands I hung my finally finished wreath on the front door a few days before Christmas. And it, like the Christmas tree, hit the ground.

"It still looks fine to me," my husband said when he came home that night. "Nobody will notice the broken cones except you. They blend right in."

But everyone did.

"What happened to your wreath? Did the screen smash into it?" one friend said. Another asked, "Did you get that at a flea market, half price?"

Then there were the homemade gifts: five matching dresses for five little cousins. Green polyester with red zig-zag trim on the collar, cuffs, and hem. "What do you think?" I asked my son.

He shook his head and said he liked the kangaroo better.

Even the turkey was a disaster. I cooked it with the giblets and the directions inside.

The moral of this story is that there is no such thing as a perfect Christmas. Trees fall down. Presents break. Things you've worked on don't always work out. People make fun of the dresses you've made or bought. Things don't fit. Or things do fit and you wish they didn't. Someone you want to be home isn't. Someone you wish wasn't home, is.

Christmas is never what you expect it to be. But nothing is. The secret to a happy Christmas is the secret to a happy life. You have to roll with the punches. Focus on what's right instead of what's wrong. Throw away Good Housekeeping, and stick to Catholic trees.