(An excerpt from "Jersey Sure"....a gift for you. Laugh. It is that time of year too.)
Blue Christmas
(The tin foil tree and a hazard to navigation)
My mother had a somewhat bizarre idea of class. Class was blue. Why blue? We never really unraveled her thought process, or lack thereof, on this unique perspective. Largely because we were afraid to ask. All part of our survival instinct. But to this frustrated Contessa, class had a color and she wanted it. She tolerated her lack of public recognition for eleven months but decided this Christmas was the opportunity to show the entire world how dignified she truly was. In a universe of middle class and lower, she placed her nose firmly in the air and proceeded to infuse our lowly existence with haute de culture.
Her mania completely disrupted our sense of Christmas. For although we did not understand how class could have a color and why that color was blue, we knew Christmas did have a color. In fact, it had two colors. Red and green. Along with multi-color lights and tacky decorations. This was a season with a look of distinction. One my mother decided to alter. My sister and I sensed impending doom. We looked to our father to intervene. He knew Katie longer than we did. He was our only hope to slow her assault. But, he knew Katie longer than we did. He saw the impending doom for what it was. A force of nature beyond his control. Wordlessly, he shrugged his shoulders and watched as Katie recreated Christmas in her warped idea of upper crust. The other members of the house mere victims along for the ride on a holiday highjack.
She headed for ground zero in her Yuletide Blitzkrieg. The tree itself. Our tin bells were ready to grace the room with angel's wings. The brass Santas nestled in a box, actually crammed, but that image seemed unfit for such a hero, laid in wait for another year with a hook through their heads in hope to once again dangle in glee. Our tree top angel waited patiently to be volted to life. All in vain. For Katie targeted the tree and all its trimmings for replacement. The new dictator of the season decided to go artificial.
The science of artificial tree making was not quite perfected. Perhaps someday it would be. Someday, the fake pines and fur may become things of beauty, accepted by people as safer, easier, and equally pretty. Although there would most likely always be purists who claimed fake seedlings of any shape or size defiled the very concept of the Holiday, artificial trees may someday evolve to an acceptable substitute for the real things. Perhaps. But not yet. We committed to putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Maybe artificial trees would someday be beautiful. Not yet though. Technology did not equal that challenge. The moon shot thing looked a lot more likely than a nice, fake, Christmas tree.
Artificial trees looked, well artificial. And that put it kindly. These bastardizations were basically a bunch of green pipe cleaners stuck in the corner. Most people waited to see if science could do something nice as time moved on, Christmas tree wise. Not Mom. During what was clearly the Stone Age of artificial trees, my mother decided to jump on board. We squealed like stuck pigs when she announced her edict. Even my father gingerly voiced protest. This woman on a mission assured us the tree would not be a bunch of pipe cleaners but a thing of rare beauty. Besides she wanted it. What else did she ask for in life? Everyday she went to work, and finally she asked for one thing......Somewhere, as this verbal guilt trip headed into eternity, we lost all sense of time. Her verbal erosion ate away our dam of resistance. We surrendered. We do not know who caved in first. Probably my father, for a winter of nights on the couch loomed with his resistance. It may have been my sister, and it could have even been me. The pain blurred the exact sequence. One by one, we each cried Uncle and resigned ourselves to the tyranny of an artificial tree.
But my mother was not heartless. At least not completely and totally heartless. For she kept her word that the tree would not be a mere collection of pipe cleaners. She selected what qualified as a thing of beauty in her eyes.
It came in a box. Roughly 4 foot long, and two feet wide and deep. My sister and I gasped in wonder at it. Perhaps there was wonder in this technology. For how did they stuff an entire tree in that small box? Did it expand? Was it inflatable? My mother smiled at our naiveté' about this state of the art of invention. She explained it to us like a science teacher describing space travel to a retard. The box held a six-foot tree unlike anything we have ever seen, she spoke slowly so we could grasp our luck at being selected as part of this adventure. It had to be assembled. She waited for our oohs and aahs. She never got them. We were a lot closer to boos and hisses.
I was picked as the one to open it. Slowly, I folded back the lid but cleverly bent my torso to avoid the inevitable branch in the eye when the tree sprang forth from the box like a gag snake. But it did not spring forth. With great trepidation, I peered inside the container and saw a cardboard honeycomb. There was no tree. Only some metal spikes stuffed into each opening in the honeycomb.
Helpless to resist the magnetism of the box, all four of us gathered around it like witnesses at the first alien encounter. A strange visitor from another dimension had invaded our Christmas. Our small corner of the universe was forever changed. Three of us looked at the traitor who invited this intergalactic intruder. She was there, with the eyes of a little girl who'd gotten exactly what she wanted for Christmas. It was actually quite cute. This woman who refused to miss a day of work except for an all too rare bus ride to the City and who accepted far less monetary wealth in life than she deserved, was transformed. She had the face of a youth and a smile of satisfaction seldom seen. Her awe was a thing of beauty. It was the only thing that kept the three of us from ripping her eyes out. That and the prospect of jail time. Unless, of course, we knew prison had real Christmas trees.
The tree building began as the first branch was removed from the honeycomb. Christmas destruction began as well. For the branch was silver. We were stunned. Katie was ecstatic. Ironically, our diverse reactions were for exactly the same reason. No one had a silver tree. No one even had heard of a silver tree. This was the first of its kind anywhere in existence until that very moment. It was unprecedented. It was unparalleled. People would talk. They would spread the word of it throughout the neighborhood. This silver tree would be the major focus of discussion all across our social circle. Katie saw it immediately. So did we. She basked in glory. We looked for ways to slash our wrists, contemplated putting ourselves up for adoption, and simultaneously considered life as hobos.
The afternoon became an odyssey of the unexpected. We never before knew the importance of twirling countless times as we eased the branches from the hive. We learned the concept of color-coded branches as the holey stick in the corner filled with tinsel like appendages. The object took shape. Perfectly even on each level as the length of the branches shortened to the top. The designers cleverly left the trunk of their creation in two pieces for ease of assembly. It prevented reaching over the bottom branches to place the upper ones in their predetermined holes. The result was half a tree in the stand, seemingly aborted at mid trunk, and a smaller tree on the floor, listing helplessly on its side. My father and I gently placed the two together to complete the job and stood back to see the creation.
My mother was true to her word. It did not look like pipe cleaners in the corner. Instead, we owned the first ever tree made from aluminum foil. This was not a Christmas tree. It was the off-spring from an ill-conceived romance between a TV antenna and a lightning rod. My father, sister, and I starred at it, wondering what could be worse. My mother showed us with more surprises from her Christmas mutation.
It was time to decorate this festive folly. But aluminum did not lend itself to lights. While that streamlined the decorating process, a Christmas tree without lights was, well, not quite a Christmas tree. Our innocent pleading for strands of bright bulbs met righteous indignation. My mother knew it was inherently unsafe. It said so on the directions. It would kill us all. Three of us seriously considered doing it anyway.
She cast aside our request for lights and told us to get the decorations. At last, we saw a glimmer of hope. We could hang onto our past glories with balls and trinkets of yore. But Katie ended that prospect quickly. For a new tree deserved new decorations. We opened them with intentions of salvaging some seasonal glee.
But there must have been some mistake. For all the decorations were exactly the same. Blue Balls. Same size. Same color. Not a variation in the lot. We looked to her. We knew again without words. It was not a mistake. Not by her standards at least. Our aluminum foil tree would be festooned with class. The class of color. Blue Balls. With faces more in shock than celebration, we hung our heads as we hung the ornaments. Each year, during the tree decorating, my heart had music in it. This year was no exception. But this year it was a dirge. We finished the job. A scene more Hitchcock than Capra. Helpless victims, we eyed the thing in the corner. Sought the appeal. Missed it.
My sister looked at me. Me at her. Both at our father. Was this a nightmare? Was this really happening? My mother felt the joy as if an out of body experience. We equated it more to out of her mind. But she was not done.
For the silver tree needed color. She introduced us to another innovation. The Reflector. We eyed this plastic globe with fear and question. It was red. It held a light bulb. It had a plastic wheel that rotated with three colors on it, red, green, and sort of a putrid orange. The artificial tree designers devised a concept that turned a silver tree into different colors with the wonder of light alone. At least, that was their plan.
The Reflector moved through its limited color spectrum and cast light on the silver embarrassment that occupied the corner of our living room. The silver tree first hosted a green hue. The motor of the reflector filled the awkward silence, and the tree transformed to silver with hints of a yellow-orange not common to anything in nature. We watched as technology gone amok changed the tree to something reddish. My mother was amazed. So were my sister, father, and I. Amazed that one single tree could be ugly in three different colors.
Our only hope of reducing public humiliation laid in keeping this tree from view. It would be difficult. It was placed in the corner of the room facing Main Street. The windows on each side highlighted its existence to any passers-by. This was intentional in years passed. But in years passed, we never had a tree that was better unseen. It was beyond comprehension prior to this dark day as this tinseled nightmare gleamed before us. But the harsh reality was here and now, and it held us helplessly. Like Prisoners of War linked by the experience of this not-even-close-to-looking-anything-but-fake tree, the three of us in the room who had not lost their minds evaluated an entirely new concept simultaneously…minimizing collateral damage. If not seen, the metal menace would not be discussed. If no one knew our shame, we would not have to explain it away. There was a faint glint of hope in our agony of defeat.
But Maniacal Mom on her Christmas Campaign evaluated the visibility of her newborn glee and found it sadly lacking. The world must know. Each and every one who saw the house on Maple Avenue must know first hand the caliber of people it contained. She instituted Plan B. As diabolical a move as I had ever witnessed in all my ten years.
Our house was strategically placed. People saw it a quarter mile away after a bend on Main Street. It was known for years as a beacon of Christmas joy as drivers and passengers turned the bend and witnessed a gaily-colored structure ablaze in seasonal glory. This year they would turn and see a place that screamed with class. At least, that was my mother's plan. She replaced every light that decorated our house with bulbs of one color. The color of class. Blue. All of them. This removed any chance of our hiding the transformation. Like Frankenstein's monster, it looked a hell of a lot better on the drawing board than cascading into the night.
Multi-color lights worked in tandem. Bright reds eased into the hue of the orange ones. White lights blazed forth but were tinged with the subtlety of the greens. The effect was peaceful. Tranquil. Pretty. A house decorated with all blue lights was something else. More abomination than attraction. The blue ones combined like a synergistic scream from hell. The house was a laser blow to the retina, more frightening than festive. But the demise of anything glorious about our decorations did not end there. For in her warped world where blue equated to class, twinkling lights were something only Ralph Kramden enjoyed. Mom forbad such indignity. Instead, she tied her sense of class again to technology. Another innovation from the people linked to artificial trees and reflectors. The FLASHER
.
The FLASHER, a high tech solution to crass twinkling lights, made twinkling lights a thing of the past. The FLASHER, gave high-class folks the entertainment value of twinkling lights without the grittiness of such an obviously low class spectacle. The FLASHER was distinctive. The FLASHER was new. The FLASHER was something few had. The FLASHER cost less than two dollars. In essence, The FLASHER was marketed directly to my mother.
For The FLASHER allowed all the lights to go off and on together. It achieved a far more spectacular effect than mere twinkling. It lived up to its promise fully that eventful year.
For the house of blue lights did not merely ease into view as drivers turned that bend on Main Street. Thanks to The FLASHER, every light on the house went out. The FLASHER did not just entertain the drivers. It ambushed them. They turned the bend, perhaps even singing carols, blissfully unaware of what lay in the darkness before them. When suddenly - WHAM! Where there had been nothing, a house appeared. Trimmed entirely in blue lights. Blue lights that did more than eek with class. Blue lights that penetrated their corneas like bullets. Blue lights that removed any semblance of night vision and replaced it with blindness mixed with stark terror.
We heard new sounds that year. Ones normally not associated with Christmas. The squeal of tires. The grinding metal of locked brakes as helplessly blind drivers scrambled frantically to save themselves and their passengers. Screams of panic sliced the night air as a house appeared from nowhere and emotionally scarred holiday travelers. A house that then, thanks to the wonders of The FLASHER, disappeared from site and left drivers blind and disoriented.
My mother did not hear any of it. She reveled in glory as the Reflector turned her tree of silver to shades of beauty beyond comprehension. With the occasional glance outside, she saw firsthand the joy of the bugged-eyed people who locked their brakes to share her marvel. This Christmas Queen accepted their waves of recognition as her due as they eased their cars back off the sidewalks and out of neighbor's yards. The dramatic effect of The FLASHER caused her to squint though. She missed that not all their fingers were extended in greeting. She basked in class and saw things from another place. A place three people in the big house on Maple Avenue vowed would not be inflicted on Christmas again. Three people who prayed the designers of artificial trees, Reflectors, and The FLASHER had nothing to do with the space program.
