Life in the Cheese Drawer

“I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”

there is nothing that resonates at christmas quite as much as charlie brown when you’re an adult. even though he’s in the body of a child, his thoughts and attitude toward christmas are very much an adult ones. everything about a charlie brown christmas digs deep into your chest and sits there for a while. meanwhile, the music is fleeting; by the time you realize what vince guaraldi’s piano means, it’s too late to know that it’s meant for you. and no matter how much you try, no matter what you do, nothing – nothing – can make christmas quite what it was when you were a child.

most of the time, in my case anyway, i feel like i’m going through the motions: put up a tree, make cookies, watch the movies. and while i enjoy all those things, it’s still missing. the anticipation, the excitement, the hope, the “first time” ness of the christmas experience.

some of it may be that the season starts in october and stops abruptly the day after christmas. the calendar location of christmas is such that the celebration should start almost directly after our axial tilt starts to glean a little more light at the ends of our days, but instead, we are celebrating encroaching darkness. (i understand that this is hardly noticeable to the average person. but solstice-time celebrations are all about bringing the light back.) by the time christmas actually gets here, we are so christmassed out that we don’t feel like christmas is actually happening.

and i would bet most people suffer from the “i don’t feel the way i’m supposed to feel” that charlie brown feels.

there’s a great webcomic by the oatmeal about how to be perfectly unhappy. it posits that it’s ok to not be happy all the time. that happiness is a constant state that means you’ve gotten to the point of accomplishment. thinking about it, the majority of my time is not spent in a perpetual state of happiness. it’s more likely that most people exist in a state of okay-ness. maybe being an adult is realizing that a lot of the time we don’t feel the way we’re supposed to feel.

“christmastime is here. happiness and cheer. fun for all that children call their favorite time of year.” that this line in the song is set to one of the most melancholy tunes does not surprise me.

so perhaps it’s best to think in terms not of how we’re supposed to feel. maybe we should think in terms of how we do feel and go with it.  for a moment or two in october i remember that christmas is coming and i get excited. when i see rows of christmas decor for sale in october, i get irritated. i know the day i put up my christmas tree is going to be a lot of work but i like looking at the tree, so i’ve resigned myself to the work. if you think of christmas as a constant happy time, most of the time i don’t feel how i’m supposed to feel.

but then i see christmas lights on a lone tree in the distance. step outside on a cold night when snow is falling and hear a total, encompassing silence with the whiteness of the snow reflecting to light up the darkness. unwrap my favorite ornaments to hang on the tree. open the door to a pile of packages that just came in the mail. pull out the time-life records to play on christmas eve. watch “it’s a wonderful life”. take silly pics with the fam just to irritate my dad. listen to “o holy night” and its crystal clear high note.

it’s then i feel a little bit of christmas excitement that i feel was ever-present when younger. and it’s ok that it’s not ever-present now. it’s ok to be just ok. i think charlie brown represents what’s best about being an adult at christmastime: you might not feel how you’re supposed to feel, but, even though you may not meet expectations of those around you, you still chase moments of christmas. and if you’re lucky? you catch them.

in austin, my family owned a farm. it wasn’t a working farm, and for a long time, i didn’t know what to call it – not a hobby farm, but not just a large piece of land. we had a barn and a big garage, a field and a pasture. sometimes we had people rent the pasture land and horses cavorted among the oaks and down by the creek that wound its way over the acreage. 
eventually i realized and told everyone i grew up on a tree farm. 
the 20 acres close to our house was littered with large oaks, old apple trees, and many many acres of conifers. my dad was partial to blue spruce with their light-blue hue, and long-needled norway pines lined the ditch along the edge of our property. 
springtime brought the UPS man with boxes of wispy bare-root trees that went into the earth we cut open with shovels. they grew a little each year, the new growth bright neon green against the dark green needles. 
as they grew, they each took on characteristics of their name. short needled trees took longer to grow, and if we didn’t cut back the long-needled norways, they grew like weeds into leggy, branchy trees whose trunks you stayed away from unless you wanted a hand full of sap.
springtime also brought birds to the lines of trees along the other side of our property. because the trees were short enough for someone to peer into, we walked along the treeline to see if anyone had made a nest. more than once we found blue robins’ eggs in a tidy little nest. we never touched.
summertimes were glorious – playing hide and seek was a task if we hid among the rows of trees instead of behind the large deciduous trees. most times we had to define boundaries so we wouldn’t be searching all afternoon. 
but come christmas, that was when we truly earned the title of tree farm. after thanksgiving, we opened up our driveway to people to come cut their own tree. my dad painted a large sign that he screwed to our fence post down at the end of our driveway so anyone driving the county road could see. it could have been the size of a door, was painted white with a large green tree on it, with TREES in red. 
they came up our driveway, grabbed a saw, found their tree, and pulled it back. at this point, we brought out the measuring pole (it, too, was painted white with lines at the 4′, 5′, 6′, 7′, and 8′ marks. we charged more for short-needled trees (remember they take longer to grow). then finally the tree would be tied onto a car roof or thrown in the back of a pickup, and off for christmas it would go. it was exciting.
now the farm and its trees have been left to grow. no more trees are planted in the springtime, and no more people drive in during the weeks leading up to christmas to cut their own. the land is almost unrecognizable, the pines that i remember planting already so tall i couldn’t even begin to guess their actual height. instead of trekking out to the backyard to pick a tree for christmas, i drive to someone else’s tree farm and pick one out. from wispy to wondrous.
o christmas tree, how lovely are your branches.