Dec 14 2008
Christmas Tree
We got our tree today, and I don’t remember it being such an exhausting thing when I was a kid, but I’m wiped out. Lucky for me I get to stay up and work tonight. Christmas tree day has become one of the parts of the holiday season that I dread just because it’s so draining. Picking out the tree is easy enough, it’s just what happens afterward. I often feel bad for the tree.
Today was no different. I let the kids decorate the tree, not out of any sense of benevolence, but because I have no choice. Before the netting is even off the tree, it’s trunk barely secured and wet in the tree stand, they attack with gobs of ornaments. Inevitably I yell to back off at least until I can get the lights on, but apparently the cold alters their ability to understand English. They only sentence they seem to get is, “If you don’t ________, I’m calling Santa and canceling Christmas!” That works for all of 30 seconds.
In all seriousness, how do you handle this event with your special needs child? We try to minimize the overexcitement by delaying the tree purchase as long as possible. I’m going to spend the next 2 weeks repeating the mantra “leave the tree alone.” I’m not trying to be a Grinch here, but there are, at the very least, some real safety concerns when a seven year old wants to keep plugging in and unplugging lights or when he’s being wild right next to a seven foot tree.
Getting the tree is not only an exhausting experience for me, but for Gus as well. He becomes completely obsessed with the it but also wants to do the right thing and stay away from it, so he’s engaged in a constant inner tug-of-war. The poor kid crashed before his head even reached the pillow and he was crying because his five wishes hadn’t come true, some of which were: the bathtub being longer, the drain being made of wood, and that our house would turn into a giant carrot (he later changed the request to a giant olive.) I’d say he was pretty fried.
So would it be better to just skip the tree madness altogether? Do we wait until it’s even closer to Christmas? I’d love to hear how others handle this.
