Christmas in California
©Makenna Karas
Written by: Makenna Karas
Start the clock.
We have exactly one hour and forty-five minutes to get the tree before heat-induced delirium sets in and we have to shed layers in reptilian fashion. For most families, this is a fun-filled, festive activity to be looked forward to with joy. For my family, it’s a sport. As Califorinans in perpetual protest of the winter heat, we cram our sweaty feet into fleece-lined boots and pull itchy sweaters over our feverish heads, refusing to be left out of winter. Or, the concept of it.
It goes like this. My brother and I get ushered out of the house and into the family car, the claustrophobic compact that has long since replaced the spacious minivan of our youth. A tall family, we pile in like clowns to a clown car, amusing neighbors as they smile and wave. With knees crunched and heads kissing the ceiling, there is no going back. My dad blasts Christmas music, as if Michael Bublé can really save us, while my mother, drunk off of the excitement of having all of her children compressed into one, locked vehicle, grins ear to ear in her seat like a madwoman. My brother and I stare straight ahead like angsty teenagers, occasionally exchanging looks of battered amusement as we lose all feeling in our legs.
©Makenna Karas
We get to the place that I would love to call a tree farm but really must be explained for what it is: a parking lot in the back of a home improvement warehouse that eerily pumps out staticky Christmas music from a radio that sits in the middle of an array of poinsettias. Poinsettias that are, invariably, wilting under the lethal sun. My brother and I have barely crawled out of the car and unfolded our crunched bodies when our mom calls us over to look at a tree. Here, hold this one, she instructs while diving back into the pile like a fish to the sea, searching for something that my brother and I can never seem to comprehend. We squint, we tilt our heads, we stand back and take a look from a distance, and still, it’s a tree.
Not to them. My dad says something about fullness while my mom shanks the ties with scissors that appeared out of nowhere, unraveling the tree, shaking it, turning it around and around and around. Yes, that one. That one is perfect. Get it, get it now, my brother and I beg. Are we sure, are we absolutely positive that this is our tree? It’s a severed Conifer mom, not a puppy, let’s go.
©Makenna Karas
What happens next is neither a joke nor an embellishment. When I say that this tree suddenly takes precedence over the lives of my brother and I, I mean it. A normal person would look at a compact car and a family of four and logically understand that there is no room for a tree. A normal person would not instruct their fully-grown children to lie down across folded-down seats, heads hitting the door of the trunk, staring up into the sky as their skulls jostle with every bump in the road. Not my parents. To them it’s simply, oh yes, “festive”.
My brother and I exchange glances over the massive sap machine between us, both knowing that despite the heat stroke and dried out trees, despite the cramped legs and embarrassing theatrics, there will come a day where we might just miss it.
©Makenna Karas
Stop the clock.
