Five Christmas trees? Sure, why not!

Open this photo in gallery:

David Moscrop is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.

In the fall of 2020, living alone in my Ottawa apartment, I decided to decorate early for Christmas. It started with a few strings of lights in late October; a few days later, it had progressed to mugs, candles and a Santa hat on a resin velociraptor-skull statue. A scraggly table-sized Christmas tree – my only one – soon sat on the counter of my tiny place, miniature ornaments jutting out at impossible angles.

This year, the home I share with my partner features three trees: a live and chonky eight-footer in our living room, a 7.5-foot artificial tree in my office, and a 7-foot less-than-real-but-near-ideal slim pine in our bedroom. This, for what some might describe as “normal” people, is a lot of Christmas trees. But I had actually argued for five trees this year, wanting one for the basement and another for the awkwardly shaped open landing alongside the staircase that runs to our upper floor. Wouldn’t a tree look splendid right there?

Five trees was my opening gambit; I settled at three. But I was permitted to connect each to a smart plug-system alongside other lights inside and outside that wake each day when I proclaim the words “Turn on Christmas,” or at 5:19 p.m., whichever comes first. I think it’s a pretty good deal.

First Person: This year, I’m bringing a live tree inside for Christmas, then returning it to nature

The early decorating, the floods of festivity, the room-by-room proliferation of trees – a cozy, seasonal modelling of the Cold War domino theory – sounds like a lot. My partner certainly thinks so. But it makes some sense in the context.

During the pandemic, I spent countless months in my apartment with no one around. Anxious about what COVID-19 might do to me (having suffered more chest infections and bouts of pneumonia than is ideal) and seized by a fear of the unknown, I made camp and elected to ride out the plague years among my books and decorations. Back then, if you’d told me that within half a decade I’d be living with a partner in a suburban home, negotiating whether two full-sized trees would be enough to put up in November, I’d have thought you were something worse than mad. But here we are.

Some of us have memory-holed those pandemic years. I haven’t. So much of that time was joyless and dark that now I’m inclined to seize on any and every opportunity to celebrate joy and light. The trees as a metaphor isn’t subtle – but it’s not meant to be.

Our whole street is lit up during the holidays. In fact, our entire neighbourhood is; several homes on our block even have the same giant inflatable Santa. The eclectic lights and decorations remind me that we live in a community where we each pitch in to share in the season. The tree outside our house is lit, too, and though I don’t count it as a Christmas tree, I love it too: During the pandemic, I was nervous to even step outside onto the busy sidewalk outside my apartment building. Now I try to spend at least a little time each day outside looking at the decorations and lights, refusing to take anything for granted.

These Canadians are embracing early holiday decor – and jingling their bells at the haters

If the decorations outside speak to the bonds of community, the ornaments on our trees inside speak to the love of family, traditions, and the small joys of the mundane. Each year my partner and I exchange an ornament meant to capture something of the spirit of the other. When we travel, we pick up something from the place we’re visiting to hang. In my office, a miniature videocassette of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, my favourite movie growing up, dangles opposite a little Nintendo Entertainment System controller, honouring the time I survived a prolonged illness and risky surgery at Toronto’s Sick Kids Hospital growing up. I have vivid memories of coming home and playing my NES. I can’t recall if I felt lucky to be alive or ever doubted that I’d come home, though I do remember feeling scared. I know I feel lucky now. The ornament helps underscore that.

Whether it’s a janky tree on a countertop, or three big trees spread throughout your home, or any other decorative non-necessity you unpack to celebrate the holiday season, there’s an awful lot of freedom and joy in giving yourself license to indulge in the bright, cozy comfort of tradition. Perhaps at some point you’ll pass the boundary of what’s reasonable, or even of what’s indulgent. Maybe that’s somewhere around the three-tree mark. But brightness in dark times is self-justifying. And life, like the winter season, is long. We will have five trees yet. Count on it.