Last Christmas

It is the season, when Norway doesn’t see much sunlight and every morning you awake feeling like it is still the middle of the night. Tell you what, it is difficult, having to rise out of bed when the sun doesn’t rise until March again, that is if we are lucky. I am exaggerating, but it does feel like that. It wouldn’t be all that bad if it were at least warmer, or if on every street corner someone would give out Candy canes, both of which is not happening.

But I cannot complain, I mean, I can, but I will not. I love it, but not because of the reasons I just so nicely delicately laid out, but because I am with A who drags me three weeks before Christmas to get a Christmas tree. I guess it is a American thing because I highly doubt that his yiayia (greek grandma) would have ever put up a pine needle tree in her house. But maybe I am wrong, all I know is that my better half picked me up one day after work just so we could look at Christmas trees in the pitchblack darkness of the night without any flashlights. I don’t know if that was our fault for not bringing flashlights or the Christmas-tree-people’s fault for not thinking that the majority of the day will be dark and therefore people will not be able to carefully examine their indoor-trees. But either way, we had to rely on all of our senses to pick out our new buddy.

After looking at all the trees (four hundred or so) that the Christmas-tree-people (for lack of a better description) carefully put up in the park in front of house for our own convenience, we finally decided on a dark-green 5 foot tall tree. I was happy, A was happy, Christmas-tree-person was NOT happy. He had all kinds of reasons for us to not get the tree we picked out. He gave us a lecture on the type of tree we picked, how it was Danish rather than Norwegian and that not all trees are the same and if we were really sure, that we wanted THAT tree. He ranted for what seemed like 45 hours about why he wouldn’t go for the tree that we picked. I however WAS sure, that the tree we picked out, was going home with us, but I was getting more and more unsure if the night we pick out to get our Christmas-tree was actually the right night. Have you ever seen Freddy Krueger? Well, imagine his younger brother trying to sell you a Christmas tree.

Eventually we got him to letting us buy the Christmas tree that WE picked out, he was very reluctant, and let us feel his disapproval. He cut of the foot of the tree, starring at me all the whilst he was doing it, he kept shaking his head and mumbling something, that I only partly understood. We had to wait another 10 minutes for the Freddy Krueger junior to net our tree, still shaking his head as if he had deeply disappointed him.

We gave him our guilt-felt money and slowly made our way to our apartment. A and I ran with the tree on A’s shoulders, whispering on the entire way home for the fear of him following us and wanting the tree back if we weren’t taking care of our Danish tree right. We made it home in one piece, locked the doors and windows. Seriously, if you work at a Christmas-tree-place you should at least have a Christmassy-sense and not be so creepy, after all Halloween was a couple months ago!

I guess, because of having this guy’s lectures still ringing in our ears, we decided to immediately put the Christmas-tree-stand out and let the tree settle. Neither A nor I spoke of or with the tree the next couple days, it was just standing there, un-loved by his owners because of the Christmas-tree-mean-man. On day three though we put aside all our bad feelings, put on some really jolly Christmas songs and decorated our Danish tree.

It might not be the best decorated or the most awesomest tree but it is our last Christmas-tree as unmarried couple. Because next year, we will celebrate Christmas as husband and wife and although it probably won’t change much of our daily routine and yearly traditions, one thing that will change is where and when we will pick out our Christmas trees.

With this I hope you guys have all your Christmas presents wrapped and all your trees picked out, enjoying the Christmas days with your families and friends.

Much Love,

J