Theresa · Mather

In my area, you can get a permit to take a tree from federally owned forest land to take home to use as a Christmas tree. Even though the areas you can get permits for need to be thinned anyway, I would find it kind of depressing to go rip a tree that was innocently minding its own business away from the cool alpine world of chirping birds and cavorting squirrels to cover it with cheesy decorations and slowly watch it die until it became a hazard enough that I felt compelled to throw it away. I guess I should explain that the short days and long nights of winter usually already leave me with a touch of cabin fever and a case of the blues, so adding the slow spectacle of a dying tree just doesn't seem like a happy addition to my usually already black holiday mood. I could buy a live tree, but I have a parade of previous years' live trees left by previous owners of my house growing in my yard. With 60+ trees on a half acre, I'm already confronted with the fact that at some point I'm going to have to remove some of them to give others room. My blue spruce former Christmas trees may be 5, 7, 15 and 25 feet high respectively but eventually they could get 60 feet high, and I have lots of other types of pines that may or may not have been Christmas trees (or maybe left over Christmas trees on sale judging from the number of them) so I ruled out a live tree.

Instead, my Christmas tree is a garish fiber optic obviously fake thing with a plastic faux antique base and 10 color wheels so I can change its light show from seizure inducing strobe to shifting rainbow colors when the mood takes me. It may not have the comforting smell of pine (although I bet some sort of accessory scent pack is available since it already comes with so many "special" features) but I'm a believer that to properly celebrate the "holidays" (to use a term offensive enough in Utah to incite an attempt at legislation by crazy state senator Chris Buttars) one must revel in tackiness. After all, tis' the season for meaningless mass consumption and compulsory annual elevation of vapid consumerism and self indulgent excess to the level of a religious rite. So why fight it...I just go with it.
Last night we decked our plastic multi-thousand fiber optic lighted "tree". In addition to the plastic fashion-model posed cross-eyed Disney princesses with mouths frozen in catatonic Barbie smiles of surprise as they unwrap gifts or feed glazed-eyed apparently drugged docile songbirds, I placed and elegantly rendered porcelain Alice the Goon, leering gritted-teeth Brutus, and a smug looking Jughead from Archie looking every bit like he's stealing the bag of gifts he's carrying. Amid the blown glass balls of various colors, Batman and Superman hang in action poses- I intended that they should be fighting but instead it looks like they've finally found true love and are happily doing an energetic disco dance with one another to express their feelings. Bugs Bunny dressed as Carmen Miranda complete with Tutti Frutti Hat flirts coyly from a crinkly plastic bough. Wimpy offers a shiny porcelain burger on a platter in a selfless act of Christmas generosity. Grim from Mother Goose and Grim scratches his fleas as his Christmas light bedecked sombrero reads "Fleas Navidad". Most of these ornaments have some memory attached to them. Not all of them fit on the tree at once so not everyone gets a chance at appearing every year. I still haven't found my collection of Eeyores- I always related to Eeyore more than any other Pooh character, though I have some psycho Tiggers and fat Pooh bears. I can't leave Eeyore drooping unseen in his boxes, it's just too sad, so I'll keep stuffing ornaments on the tree until I find him. Finally, I'll top my tree of tackiness with the most garish tree topper I could find in all of Walmart. I looked at the Ace hardware/quilt shop/gun store and although they had many a cheese-ball thing and a super special for Christmas on Glocks, the Walmart one was cheesier. It is a tall glitter covered plastic extravaganza from exotic India.
I have to hang a few more stockings (which will probably merit coal at best this year) and some ornaments that I used to make when I had time to make crafty items. Overall, I feel much more in the spirit now. All I need is to download Stephen Colbert's Christmas :The Greatest Gift of All cd and I think I'm ready to get into this Holiday mood thing.

I hope some might consider helping to bring Christmas to a child in the Oglala Lakota Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) Program on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. OLCASA advocates for abused and neglected Lakota children in the court system. They have set up a virtual Angel Tree for the children so that they can have a present for Christmas. For some of the kids, it may be the only gift they receive.

Poverty is widespread on the reservation and there are very few jobs available.

I have bought two toys from the list and will be shipping them to the reservation tomorrow. Most of the things the kids have asked for are very inexpensive, and I feel happy knowing that two little girls will have something special to unwrap on Christmas morning.

This happened awhile back, but I remember promising to post a strange Utah story for Colleen Cotelessa when we were at Loscon, and it slipped my mind as to exactly what it was. It came to me a day or two ago that this might be it:

Cows Alarmed at Seeing Their Fate Flee Trailer in Utah Parking Lot

This made the rounds internationally because the antics of Brittany and Paris can't fill every news cycle, but I chose the Fox link 'cause that's where many of the good people of Utah *still* prefer to get their news.

In my own news, I'm painting small originals for 2008 as well as originals for new prints. I'm happy with the progress, in spite of the temptation working in my office with the distraction machine/computer lies. I work by sunlight and the hours are short at this time of year. I do think at some point I'll insulate my studio so I can work out there year round, but for now, I paint indoors during winter. I got a subscription to the Phil Hendrie Show and am enjoying listening to his madness while I'm working. (For a sample of what he does click the "Lord Vader" clip on his website. He's both the host and the guest, though the angry callers don't know that.) I think that I need to be at least three months ahead in my work because of the recurring family emergencies that cause me to make unexpected trips seemingly every year, and also because it allows me to work at a more relaxed pace. So far, the unexpected travel hasn't caused me to miss any shows but it has had me working up to the deadline to send things and I haven't gotten to new work for prints when I need to. The best thing I can do is take full advantage of the time I have now, which means no Christmas family trip this year. This will be my first Christmas in my own house, which I'm looking forward to.