Tweaking The Tree

Sometimes when I walk from the living room to the dining room, I tweak the Christmas tree.

I see a bare spot and move an ornament to fill it, or I see too many red ornaments together and move some of them, or I see that Santa is looking into the tree again and I turn him around so he is looking out the tree.

But most times when I walk from the living room to the dining room, I see an ornament and it gets me thinking.

I look at the paraffin drum major, and I wonder how old he is and guess that he goes back to the 1940’s.

Spuds MacKenzie reminds me that yard sales are good sources of cheap and sometimes historic ornaments.

The ornaments we bought on vacation make me re-live the days in Aruba or the time we took a cable car to the top of a mountain in the Tetons.

I check out the dried starfish from Galveston and make sure they are out of the dogs’ reach.  The starfish may be dried and old, but they are organic and, in the dog’s eyes, very edible.

I look at the cream-colored ornaments and remember when I went to a yard sale and told the woman there that I was looking for Christmas ornaments.  “Oh, my mother just died and I will sell you her ornaments.”  I proudly display these ornaments on our tree, thinking that I am continuing some other family’s tradition.

I see all the candy canes and think about the time Randy and I got our first tree and candy canes were the cheapest way to fill up all the bare spots.

The pretzel man from Czechoslovakia makes me remember when I used to work for the May Department Stores headquarters here in St. Louis.  Salesmen from ornament companies would come to headquarters and leave samples, in hopes that the May Company would place big orders for their ornaments.  Once a year, May Company employees would get to purchase the samples, and that’s how I got the pretzel man.

The merman says New Orleans to me.

I look at the Empire State Building ornament and think about the New York friend who sent it to us soon after he had witnessed 9/11.

I realize that I have a personal relationship with most of the ornaments on our tree.  So, maybe I am not tweaking the Christmas tree --- the Christmas tree is tweaking me.

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Here is a 1950 Christmas song (Everybody’s Waiting For) The Man With The Bag that has been updated by Black Prairie.  The song video, complete with a yule fire in the fireplace, is 4 minutes long:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVjzPQTQI1Y

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

Last Reindeer Sitting

Our company Christmas party attracts about 800 people each year: employees and their families. The company asked me to run one of the events at the party: musical chairs.

Musical chairs sounded delightful, innocent, so much like the grand days when I was a kid and got invited to birthday parties.

It also sounded simple: all I needed was some chairs and something that plays music.  A co-worker recorded Christmas music for me: standards like Santa Claus Is Coming to Town and new stuff like Leroy the Redneck Reindeer.

Party time came, and I set out 8 chairs and corralled 9 people at a time.  9 people because Santa has 8 reindeer plus Rudolf. 

Each participant in my game had to wear antlers.  The participants ranged in age from toddlers to adults.  Some adult men did not want to make fools of themselves in public. Some adult women thought the antlers would ruin their hair.  Some toddlers had no concept of what they were supposed to do.  Some kids refused to play.  Some kids refused to stop playing.

The adults who did play were good sports, managing to miss a chair in the first couple of rounds so that just the kids could continue playing.

I spiced it up, making people walk forward, or walk backward, or hop on one foot.   At the final round, with 1 chair and 2 people left, the participants had to take off their antlers and put Christmas shopping bags over their heads.

Every participant got a prize: a cheap kaleidoscope. The Last Reindeer Sitting got a prize plus a paper tag with the number one on it, to hang around their neck on a blue ribbon.

I counted on seeing lots of smiles. I had not counted on seeing lots of tears.

As the party progressed, I started to realize that each round started with 9 participants and finished with 1 winner and 8 losers.  That’s where the tears came from.

Then a lady in a mink coat and pearls entered the room, put on some antlers, and said she wanted to play.  OK, I got 8 other participants, and started up a game.  I waited for the lady in the mink coat to miss a chair on round two or round three…but she kept on playing, playing with intensity.  She wound up in the final round with a shopping bag over her head, competing against a 9-year-old boy.

When the music stopped for the final round, the lady in the mink coat knocked the 9-year-old to the floor, and sat down on the chair.  As the Last Reindeer Sitting, she was awarded a cheap kaleidoscope and a paper number-one tag on a blue ribbon, which joined the pearls around her neck.

I sighed.  I saw how cruel musical chairs can be.  Mentally cruel because it created so many losers --- physically cruel because players got knocked to the ground by an adult who was much richer than they would ever be.

That was the last time we played Last Reindeer Sitting at the company Christmas party.

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com