“I’ve forgotten the funny name of the tree you helped us pick out,” my mother said. “Our tree this year is named Melinda.”

The greenhouse where my parents get their Christmas tree every year has festive tags hanging from the trees with their names and prices. These are not inexpensive trees, so it’s fitting they are all individually christened. My mother likes to support this local business -- and they do have nice trees.

“Caleb. The tree I picked out with you was named Caleb.”

We both agreed Caleb was a silly name for a Christmas tree, although I wasn’t sure Melinda was a whole lot better.

Christmas trees are a matter of strict personal taste. I know people who had one-too-many years of needles in the carpeting and became artificial tree owners forever after. Then there are people who insist you need a live tree -- but it doesn’t count unless you cut it yourself.

My husband, Peter, bought the house we live in before we met. It was built in 1955 and Peter was born in the ‘50s, so when I moved in, both the house and its owner had a midcentury modern vibe, and I was fine with that. We have midcentury modern dishes and lamps and furniture. But I draw the line at a midcentury modern Christmas tree.

Peter has a Christmas tree from the ‘50s that is made entirely of aluminum. It is pokey and shiny and Peter thinks it is wonderful. “It matches the house perfectly!” Peter says.

That may be, but it doesn’t look like Christmas to me.

So, last year, I went downtown looking for a tree. There was a lot filled with perfectly coiffed trees that would have put Melinda or Caleb to shame, but they were exorbitantly priced -- and they didn’t even have names. The fellow selling them seemed to have come from a background in car sales.

“So, what kind of tree did you have in mind?” he asked me.

“One that doesn’t cost more than two weeks’ worth of groceries!” I wanted to say.

Instead, I went looking for the second, less-fancy lot in town, but it was hard to find. I got directions twice and drove around in circles until I finally saw a half-dozen straggly trees poking up over an embankment. I drove down into the deserted parking lot and there was a spindly bunch of trees, all of them over 10 feet tall. A sign was posted nearby. “Family Emergency -- Pay at Hair Salon.”

I went across the street and, sure enough, the proprietor of the tree business had been called away and the trees were all being sold for a fixed price -- any size. I gave my money to the hairstylist, picked out a gangly tree and strapped it to my car.

When I got home, I cut four feet off the bottom, put it in the tree stand and saw ... it was perfect.

This year, once again, we will be home for the holidays and, unlike last year, I don’t expect anyone will see our tree except Peter and me. And I don’t care.

I’m headed downtown today, to the lot with the disreputable-looking trees. Peter will cluck his tongue and say something about the perfectly good aluminum tree he has stashed away in a box somewhere. But he’ll be a good sport (as he always is) while I decorate my midcentury modern home for Christmas and smell the fresh spruce.

This year, I might even give my tree a name. I’m thinking of naming it Peter.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

It is a year of lower expectations.

Every year, there is a chorus of folks urging us to lower our expectations for the holidays -- buy less, consume less, worry less about having a picture-perfect holiday, and spend more time reflecting on what the holiday means to us. This year, it seems, we will finally get a chance to do that.

I was recently asked what my childhood memories of the holidays were, and I had a couple of vivid ones.

I saw myself sitting on the wooden stairway of the farmhouse where my mother grew up. There were far too many people to sit at a table, too many to get any kind of chair, even after all the folding chairs were called into service and the couch filled to capacity.

The seating was distributed on a strict seniority basis and, as I was very young, all the cousins my age would line up and sit on the stairs leading to the second floor of the farmhouse, one above the other, with our plates on our laps.

This was a fine arrangement, except that the farmhouse had only one bathroom and this stairway led to it. The stairway was narrow and some of my relatives were not. And so, we would lean over as far as we could (still with our plates on our laps) to allow the elderly relatives to make their way up to the bathroom at the top of the stairs.

That is a good memory.

The year I turned 5, I had chicken pox at Christmas. I spoke to my mother recently about that year. “Oh! That was a miserable Christmas,” she said. And I’m sure, for her, it was. But my memory is not of the festivities I missed.

My mother stayed at home with me on Christmas Eve, and all I remember was the small Christmas tree my parents put in my bedroom. My memory is not of being terribly sick, but of seeing those shining Christmas lights every time I opened my eyes and feeling loved and special enough to have my very own tree.

That is another good memory.

I’ve been telling my husband, Peter, that we are making good memories now. Of course, Peter and I are not working in a hospital or trying to teach school or dealing with grumpy retail customers. We are at home all the time except for our once-every-other-week trip to the grocery store, which is beginning to feel more like an exotic adventure every time we do it.

We are seeing no one so we can continue to visit Lori, who continues to fight cancer, and Peter cooks something for her every week and I read a bit more from my book (although by this time I have finished the first book and am reading a new one) and I know we will remember this time.

We won’t have memories of a foreign landscape or a breathtaking performance or a fancy gathering. Instead, we’ll remember the excitement of hearing the doorbell ring and getting to chat with a neighbor on our front stoop. Our memories from this year will be of the same home-cooked meal, the same routine, the same clothes worn, the same neighbors greeted from across the lawn, the same dogs on my walk -- as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months. We will remember.

I might miss the excitement of a different kind of life. But I know I will remember the small, good things in this year of lower expectations.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

My friend Anita is felting up a storm.

Philip is cooking something new and posting a photo of it every day. Megan is reading Shakespeare on video, Jason is doing woodwork projects, Tom and Mary and Katie are sewing thousands of masks, and Peggy is studying Spanish, German and Latin -- all at once. Then there are the folks who are just trying to make it through the week, working jobs that demand more and more of them every day.

There is no right way to do this.

I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo -- which stands for “National Novel Writing Month” and is held every year in November. November is a month when I am usually much too busy traveling and visiting family to commit to writing 50,000 words in 30 days -- which is what NaNoWriMo is all about.

Except this year, I was not going anywhere. So, I thought, “Why not?”

There are a lot of good reasons why not, the biggest one being that, in order to “win,” a person needs to write 1,667 words seven days a week -- if they don’t take a day off on Thanksgiving. While 1,667 words may not be an impossible number of words to write in one day, it is a heck of a lot of words to write every day.

“Why are you making your life more stressful?” my husband, Peter, asked.

I knew he had a point. But I thought it would be fun because I figured, this year more than any other, there would be a lot of interesting people doing it. And I was right.

NaNoWriMo encourages writers to strike up friendships with the more than 300,000 participants. The “National” is not quite accurate; there are people writing from all over the world. Everyone I met online had a story -- how they were working from home, or their business was closed, or they were going to be doing something else that was canceled. There was a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and encouragement and positive energy.

This year in particular, having this big goal gave a bit of structure to my life that seemed to be lacking. It provided a reason to stretch in a year where just getting by often feels like more than enough. It noted the passing of the days and gave me a badge for showing up and writing -- first one week, then another -- until I made it to the end.

Most importantly, it connected me to others. And right now, that is what I am missing more than anything. Encouraging a writer in England whose B&B is closed to get her words written, providing sympathy to a writer who is struggling with her novel while caring for her elderly mother, having a writer in Hawaii say he found my writing funny -- these were the connections that made this big, ridiculous goal worthwhile. These connections made the goal irrelevant.

Of course, not all the writers finished. Some got called back into work. Some simply became overwhelmed by day-to-day life. There is no right way to do NaNoWriMo either.

We all had an adventure. We did something that made a shrinking world feel a little bigger. We might even have written a few good words in there, somewhere.

In the end, I did write 50,000 words. I don’t know if I’ll ever participate in NaNoWriMo again; I’m writing most of the time anyway. But I’m glad I did it this year. When I hit 50,000 words, I had a reason to celebrate.

Right now, I think we’re all looking for reasons to celebrate.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION