Perfect Tree

My roommate in college's family always had the perfect tree - literally. Every year Steph's mom hired a decorator who decided on a theme and decorated the whole house accordingly. The tree was always massive, perfectly cylindrical and had those gossamer ribbons flowing down it like you see in museums and high end department stores. The ornaments were perfectly and evenly placed and always coordinated. Everything was perfect.

When I got my first job and apartment I thought about that tree as I decorated for my very first Christmas. I went out and tried to buy matching ornaments and tried desperately to create a 'theme' on my shoe-string budget. What I ended up with was a tree with a lot of balls on it.

Over the years, like most people, I have bought ornaments here and there when on vacation or out and about. I have started collecting my picture ornaments too and my mother has sent the kids an ornament every year for Christmas. Slowly we have built up a decent collection of them.

Last night as I was finishing my hot cocoa I stared at our tree and realized that my definition of perfect has changed a lot because what I used to think was perfect was in fact the furthest thing from it. What I took for perfect was actually a cold, expensive imitation.

Our tree isn't cylindrical and there is a nice hole on one side but it is the one we as a family picked out and cut. Our ornaments don't match but are a patchwork of our lives and adventures over the past decade. And those ornaments certainly aren't symmetrical but rather placed on the tree by giddy children who only wanted their ornaments to be next to each other so they wouldn't get lonely. Honestly, this tree is the complete antithesis of what I used to think perfect was. But now I realize that Christmas perfection isn't seen through the eye but felt through the heart.