The Ugliest Christmas Tree: Based on a True Story

A few years ago, my roommate and I went shopping for a Christmas tree. It was a last-minute thing, so naturally the tree lot was a little picked over. Nevertheless, I had to buy something. My niece and nephew were arriving from Colorado in a few days, and they would not understand why I had no Christmas tree up and festively decorated.

My roommate and I went to a large Christmas tree lot. Roaming up and down aisle after skimpy aisle, we found a few trees that looked OK, but not perfect. I wanted a perfect or near-perfect tree. One tree had a bent top where the angel was supposed to be. Can't have a dangling angel, I thought, so I went on. Another tree we saw looked like it was the victim of a severe mugging. The third tree looked as if Edward Scissorhands had been drinking and sliced it all up.

At the end of one aisle, stuck all the way in the back by itself was a smaller tree I had passed a few times. Every time I passed it, I gave it no particular thought - it barely looked like a tree, much less a Christmas tree. This "tree" (really not much more than a scrawny bush) was under four feet high - if it were stretched out tall on a rack for trees.

The tree was bent at almost a 90-degree angle about a third of the way down from the top. Not leaning - bent. It had grown that way. The branches were almost bare, and the sparse, short needles gave the tree a skeletal look instead of the full green Christmas tree look everyone wants. Yet as I continued to occasionally pass by it, I began to sense that there was something about it...

For some reason, I went and got my roommate and took her to the ugly tree in the back. "Look at this poor pitiful thing," I said.

My roommate laughed. "Oh my gosh," she said, "Why is this tree even here? It can't be a Christmas tree, looking the way it does."

"It's the ugliest Christmas tree I've ever seen," I said. We both laughed, as cruel teenagers might laugh and tease an old man.

Suddenly we both got so quiet we could hear the birds chirp above the traffic noise. Trina and I thought a lot alike, and I wondered if she was thinking what I was thinking. "You know," I mused, "Nobody's going to buy this poor tree."

"Yeah, I was just thinking that." See what I mean? Always thinking alike.

Should I say what I was thinking next? How would this go over with Trina I wondered? I cleared my throat. "I was thinking. No one's going to buy this tree, and it'll probably go into some big bonfire or some wood factory or something."

She looked at me and raised her eyebrows quizzically. "Probably..."

"This poor old tree was born to be a Christmas tree, yet look at it. It will never get that chance. People are just going to toss it aside like so much junk, thrown away because people have these fixed ideas about what a Christmas tree should look like."

Trina smiled, sensing a mission coming on. "Yeah, you're probably right."

"Well, I was thinking," I said, as if planning a major operation, "We ought to take this tree home and make it the most beautiful tree in the whole neighborhood."

Laughing, Trina said, "I don't know about the whole neighborhood, but we can certainly dress it up."

"Yeah!" I talked faster and faster about the possibilities. "We can buy a few new ornaments - small ones so the branches don't break - lots of tinsel, sparkling lights, little wooden toys, ribbons, garland... oh, this is going to be so cool. That tree will be the most beautiful tree from this lot!" I almost said "happiest tree", but giving a tree human emotions might be taking it a bit far. Or is it?

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Trina asked.

"What?" I was puzzled for a moment. "Oh! The angel on top of the tree! Yeah, but she might fall off, the tree is so bent over."

"Eh, we'll tie her on somehow." And I knew Trina would; she was good that way.

And so it was decided. We went to find the tree lot manager and tried to bargain with him, because after all, we pointed out that the tree was "so ugly". When we told him what we were going to do to it, he let us have it free and wished us a Merry Christmas. Maybe there were other souls who thought like us after all, more than we knew.

Finally, when my niece and nephew arrived, they saw our bent-over Christmas tree all aglow and couldn't possibly imagine what I had been thinking. I explained to them that all the other trees on the lot would have probably sold anyway, because although they were the leftovers and not perfect, they still were Christmas trees, at least in how people normally think of Christmas trees.

I went on to explain to my niece and nephew why we had bought the ugliest Christmas tree. Nobody would have picked our little ugly Christmas tree, and it would have been a waste... a waste of a seed, sunshine, and water... a waste of care and hopes on the part of the tree owner. Some people might say that because the tree did not fulfill its destiny, it would have been a waste of a life. The ugliest Christmas tree was doomed, sitting on that tree lot.

That is, until we came along. We saved it from having to spend the rest of its "life" as a Christmas tree ignored, unloved, and tossed aside in a cold dark alley somewhere. Instead, we made it beautiful and celebrated its life. We gave it lights, ornaments, joy, plenty of attention, and best of all - love. As if by magic, the tree had suddenly turned beautiful.

To this day, I remember that tree more than any other. To this day, in my mind's eye that's the most beautiful Christmas tree I've ever had.