In 2006, I wrote a series of memory posts for the twelve days of Christmas for livejournal. I, reporting them here.

My first Christmas in Chicago (1991) was my first Christmas in my own apartment. I lived with two friends from college, one of whom was a most excellent roommate in that she was hyper-organized about bills.

“Our tree budget is $35,” she said. That seemed reasonable. We figured that we’d get something pretty small, given that we would all be out of town for the holiday. She and I went off to buy a tree.

We walked down the street in the snow, and my head got all giddy from the (a) snow, (b) winter, (c) overwhelming holiday spirit, and (d) AWESOME WAVES OF POWER that I could pick out my very own Christmas tree. I immediately latched onto a 12-footer.

“Er,” said my roommate. “That’s way overbudget and gigantic.”
“I LOVE IT FOREVER!” says I.

I paid for the whole thing, because I could not bear to be parted from the most enormous tree in existence: it was easily 6 feet across. I have a deep love of very fat trees, which had until that point been unfulfilled. It was quite a trudge through the snow to lug that thing home, and we had to move a bunch of furniture around to find a corner for it.

Then, the sum total of the ornaments we had among the three of us was about 10, sticking off the front of that huge tree. We stood in front of it, hand on our hips.

“After Christmas, you’re in charge of getting rid of this thing,” my roommate said.

It didn’t fit in the tree bag, and it took me almost an hour to lug the tree out of the apartment and to tip it over the edge of the fire escape, at which point it did NOT fall in the dumpster, so I had to muscle it in (not that I had any muscles), getting scratched and sore in the process.

Totally worth it.