Merrie Follies

Just last Christmas, as I winged my way South for the holidays, cheerfully unaware, it seemed that my mother had been slowly and inexorably letting down her usual Mrs. Claus façade.

She had grown weary of the marzipan-bedecked, Who-ville cakescapes that the family had come to enjoy. And gone were the laurel boughs that used to circle every picture, wind down stairs and sometimes even creep collar-like on to her rabid herd of Boston terriers. When they weren't gnashing their teeth at unsuspecting visitors, their tiny faces often wore happy eggnog smiles - yes, even the dogs had a Merry Christmas.

No crèche filled the front yard, no lights twinkled along the rooftop, not even a Christmas tree! It was Christmas Eve eve and the ever-procrastinating Mrs. Sherrill simply proclaimed, "Darling, I am running a little bit behind schedule so could you and your brother get the tree out of the storage room?" Oh, no! This did not augur well. She was referring to a faux pine tree that she had bought for a buck at the Junior League Nearly New Store, which featured branches that had lost much of their green tape and an offensive white plastic carcass that screamed through.

Brother Billy, daughter Anabelle and I made a sorry procession as we trudged downstairs. It seems that Momma Jojo was working night and day in her position as president of the Sewing Guild so that countless foster children would get Christmas Bears and Crazy Quilt Christmas Stockings. So how could we complain? But she'd even forgotten Anabelle's Hanukkah candles. This was an injustice that rivaled the suffering in the Punjab.

In the storage room were more insults. The Christmas lights were a knotty mass with splintering bulbs littering the floor, the tinsel was a tangle, and the silver and gold garlands seemed to have been involved in a major skirmish with the aforementioned Boston terriers. Turning to each other, we joined arms and raced to the car.

It was almost 11 p.m. on a cold December 23rd as we raced to the only open store - Home Depot. Screeching to a halt at the bitter cold Garden Center we leapt from the car only to find nothing but shrubs trying to pass themselves as trees! As we wandered the deserted aisles, we found It at the last cash register: a giant, blessedly full, 10-foot Christmas tree with a circumference the size of the big top at The Cirque de Soleil. Casting off an aura of pine and the great outdoors, it was a tree that the governor would be proud of. Crammed into our cart we careened around the store and scooped up 100 kilometers of leftover white Christmas lights. We bought out the white candles and loaded up with mismatched yards of garland. Finally stumbling into the construction materials department, we scooped up panels of white insulation that would yield a mountain of poofy white 'Angel Hair.' The Belle screamed for joy when we saw the last garden cart piled with poinsettias destined for the garbage heap. All three of us jumped on the cart and raced to the register, where the sales clerk totaled us up to $36.

Billy's car was, thankfully, a convertible, and with the top down we had to use all five hands (one to steer) to hold down our tree. Blasting Christmas carols, we pulled into the driveway. We could barely wedge the tree in the front door, but after stringing several bags of Orville Redenbacher's Movie Style Buttered popcorn and twist-tying our candle horde onto the tree with tiny aluminum foil holders at their bases (ever wary of fire-hazards), we lay down like we had as children so many decades ago: staring up through its branches to admire our beautiful tree, shining, glowing and smelling like a Southern Christmas.