The Red Lights

I complained about last year’s Christmas tree: “It hasn’t got enough colour!”

So, I ordered a string of red lights to brighten up this year’s tree. When they arrived in the mail, Gemma-Rose raised an eyebrow and said, “Are you sure that’s the right colour, Mum? Red is a bit demonic.”

“No, it isn’t,” I protested. “It’s festive!”

Gemma-Rose assembled our tree, arranging the lights, adding tinsel, and hanging ornaments. When she’d finished, I frowned. Something wasn’t quite right.

“It’s the red lights, Mum.” I think my daughter was right.

So, I’m not happy with our tree again.

“We need loads of warm white lights.” I told my family about a tree with a million twinkling white lights that Gemma-Rose and I had seen when we went to Sydney last weekend. That’s the tree I want for next Christmas.

On our mother-daughter weekend in the city, we saw many different Christmas trees, including a giant one in Martin Place. It has football-sized baubles, native flower decorations—banksia, waratah, bottlebrush, wattle, eucalyptus gum flower, kangaroo paw, flannel flower, pink wax flower and white wax flower—and tiny white sparkling lights. It’s a bit like our tree. It’s unexpected. It’s different. It has a lot of red on it. Is it festive?

Sitting here in front of our not-quite-right bright-red-studded tree at the start of a new day, which promises to be delightfully cool – we’ve had some sweltering weather recently – I decide it doesn’t matter what our tree looks like. Our tree won’t win any awards, but it’s ours. It tells a story.

In years to come, we’ll say, “Do you remember the year Mum bought red lights for the Christmas tree, thinking they’d look festive?”

That’s the thing about mistakes and mishaps: they produce great stories. Think about how boring life would be if everything were perfect.

I have other not-quite-perfect Christmas stories, like the one about the year our oven broke on Christmas Eve. And then there’s the story about the time we decided to have a seafood Christmas. We threw the prawn heads into our metal bin, where they remained for many days, soaking up the sweltering summer sun. By the time the garbage bin collectors arrived, an overpowering, nose-crinkling fishy smell had pervaded our garden.

How about you? Does your family ever say, “Do you remember the Christmas when…?”

(Can you see the delightful little girl in pink posing in front of the giant tree?)