Wrapping your tree

I apologize for not writing yesterday. I have a very good reason for it. The reason is that on my way home from the grocery store, I had the misfortune to get behind a driver who graduated from the Extremely Slow-Moving Driver Education School (Motto: "We Break for Ant Crossings"), and I did not get home until today. More on that story later.

Today, I want to talk about wrapping a Christmas tree. "Don't we have enough to do wrapping our gifts??" you are saying. "We have to wrap the tree, too?"

Rest assured that I am not talking about putting wrapping paper around the tree ("Whew!" all you wrapping-challenged readers are saying. I am right there with you. The greatest invention ever was gift bags). When I say "wrap the tree," I am referring to winding ribbon around the tree. This, of course, lends a very festive look to a tree, but the main reason for using ribbon is to cover up any flaws in the tree. And also to avoid having to put so many ornaments on. At least, these are my reasons for using ribbon. Martha Stewart no doubt has very different reasons, which I am not at all interested in hearing.

It is much easier to put ribbon on the tree with two people. I must stress, however, that these two people should be of the same gender. The genders tend to approach ribbon-wrapping, as most other things in life, very differently.

A woman will carefully lay the ribbon among the branches, tucking it in here and there, making it curve in certain places so that it looks rather like a flowing stream. When she is done, you hardly realize the ribbon is not an actual part of the tree, it all blends together so harmoniously. It makes you want to cry (mine makes you want to cry, too, but for slightly different reasons).

A man's approach is quite different. In the first place, no man would voluntarily choose to put ribbon on the tree; it would not even enter into his consciousness to do such a thing. "If God had wanted trees to wear ribbon, He would have made them like that in nature," is the man's motto about beribboned trees. In fact, the man probably would not even bring a large tree into the home, just a little Bonsai one with nothing adorning it, just as naked as the day God made it.

This, at any rate, is what my husband, who is a man, would do. Even now, our second year with a full-size Christmas tree, he occasionally makes noises about how nice it would be to have a little table-top tree. These noises become more prevalent while he is dragging the tree, section by section, up our very steep stairs; when he is moving furniture around, at my direction, to make room for the tree; and while he is being made, against his will and even against his better judgment, to wrap the tree in ribbon.

But I digress. When a man does get roped into putting ribbon on the tree, he approaches it in a very businesslike manner. He holds the spool in one hand and in one continuous motion wraps it around the tree. There is no stopping to tuck it into a branch here or there. There is no careful attention to the angle at which it is placed all the way around. If the ribbon ends three feet from the bottom branch, no matter. He will just add more ornaments down there to cover things up. A tree beribboned by a man looks like a toddler all swaddled in his snowsuit before he heads outside to play: stiff and awkward and barely able to breathe.

So you can imagine what a tree looks like when a man and a woman have attempted to decorate it together with ribbon. If you cannot imagine this, just come to our house. You will see exactly what I mean.