By Anna Quinlan
@annaisbadatig

I haven’t sent out Christmas cards in five years. I used to send out over 100 cards every year—the wedding invitation list plus the new ‘married life’ friends plus the new coworkers and on and on. But then one year I was just too busy. It made enough sense on the surface—I had two small kids and a job and a house to keep up—but sometimes busy is just a convenient version of a more complicated truth. 

The last four years, and especially the last two, I knew the real reason I couldn’t motivate myself to send out Christmas cards was that it just felt like such a sham. Although there would have been plenty of photos to choose from, from scenic family camping trips to adorable kid milestones to weddings in flattering formal wear, they all belied the truth that I was increasingly unhappy in my marriage. Sending out a photo of our shiny, smiling family felt like a paper trail of the white lie I was telling myself all the time: We’re fine. I’m fine. 

Last fall, maybe as a last ditch effort to go through the motions and hope the feelings would follow, I scheduled a family photo session with a local photographer whose work I’d admired on Instagram. Maybe she could make us look the part, and maybe then I could feel the part, too. My husband said he didn’t think it was worth the money, and I couldn’t bring myself to argue with him. I canceled the session—“I’m so sorry but something has come up that day!”—and I choked back tears as I wondered if I was canceling more than just a photo shoot.

Last year I couldn’t even bring myself to open the Christmas cards that arrived in the mail every day between Thanksgiving and New Years. I’d collect the mail each day and sort it into two piles: Safe and unsafe. In the safe pile I’d stack the bills, the junk, the newsletters, the school communication. Bills are safe. Bills are just math. I can just send off my money and consider it a successful and final transaction. Bills were preferable over Christmas cards.

Christmas cards were unsafe. The perfect family photos, the moms in their flowy dresses out for a family stroll in a field at golden hour. I don’t wear flowy dresses. I definitely don’t wear flowy dresses out in fields. The candid (but not candid) captures of everyone looking at each other and laughing. Such fun to be out for a stroll at golden hour! So delightful to be together! The family update letters on the backs of the cards, anecdotes written by moms who were pulling off what I couldn’t. I knew that every card, each with its version of the same photo, would just add to the growing ache in my heart. I’m not one of these moms. My marriage isn’t one of these marriages. 

I’d leave the Christmas cards sealed shut in their “unsafe” pile on the console table, making no mention of them. My husband would happen upon the pile every few days and open them, never noticing that the bills and junk and newsletters had all been sorted out and dealt with, nor that I never opened a single card. He did not notice that anything was amiss, and I pretended not to notice his unnoticing.      

On Christmas morning I watched joy upon joy unfold in my cozy living room—healthy children delighting in gifts I had thoughtfully selected, a doting father genuinely reveling in their happiness, my own parents showing up at 7 a.m., in bathrobes for a front row seat, a warm French toast casserole tracing everything with the smell of cinnamon and vanilla. 

I felt nothing. I was a shell of myself, knowing what it should feel like, but instead feeling only the resolve that I would never spend another Christmas like this again, surrounded but invisible, emptied by my own doing, having exhausted the last of my energies putting a smile on my face to proclaim that, yes, of course I’m fine. Of course everything is fine, it’s Christmas. 

***

Shortly after last Christmas, I stopped pretending. There were honest, hard conversations with each other, with my own counselor and with a couples’ counselor. In August I moved out of the house we all used to share together and into a funky but charming rental house 10 minutes away. We told the kids in October we were getting a divorce. Nothing about this holiday season will look like it did last year.

I am determined to give them a happy Christmas. I am feebly hopeful I can give myself one, too.

So instead of the usual Home Depot parking lot Christmas tree experience we’re accustomed to, I paid $2.50 for a forest permit to take my kids to chop down a Christmas tree in the wild, naturally.

Do I own a saw? I do not. Did I understand how to read the topographical map that was emailed to me with the confirmation of my forest permit? Only so far as that the N means north, if we’re being totally honest. Was I confident that it would be a fun day where my children and I all got along and no one cried? Not one bit. 

So I borrowed a saw from my dad, I had a friend help me read the map, I bought some rope at the hardware store, and I loaded my kids into the car for the 45 minute drive into Tahoe National Forest. Maybe it would be a disaster. My whole life felt like a disaster, I figured I might as well let some of the disaster unfold in a scenic wintery forest.

The mountain backroad I had selected from the map—mostly because it was the nearest spot within the permit area—turned out to be a winding, shockingly narrow two-lane road carved into a rocky hillside with a steep drop-off into an expansive canyon. I had envisioned a Christmas tree farm just existing naturally out in nature, a plethora of perfect trees scattered amidst easily walkable terrain. Instead, our priorities were quickly identified as 1.) finding a spot with enough of a shoulder to safely pull over and park the car, 2.) terrain that was even slightly walkable and not just piles of shale on the brink of avalanche, and finally 3.) the sighting of even one tree that was remotely Christmas tree shaped. The kids fought while Spotify’s Christmas Hits attempted to set the mood. My gas light came on. There was no cell service.

We finally found a spot to pull over near a tree that appeared to be roughly in the pine family. The ground was covered in wobbly mounds of shale rock but yielded just enough from the steepness of the cliff that we could get to the base of it without fearing that one misstep would cause us to plummet to our death. This would be our tree. 

I let the kids take turns swinging a small axe at it, silently begging God to let this be the memory. Let them remember that mom drove them into the forest to swing axes and fell a tree like Paul Bunyan. Let them forget the fighting, forget my tense voice when the gas light came on, forget that the Christmas music wouldn’t play anymore once we lost service, forget that their parents are getting a divorce. Please God, just let them remember this part.

Their swings of the axe made small dents that I assured them had done 90% of the job. Then I crawled underneath the lowest branches and knelt awkwardly in the rocks and forced my dad’s rusty old saw to chop that little tree down while my kids cheered. They held it over their heads for photos and then I tied it to the roof of my 2013 Honda Pilot, not totally confident it would survive the drive home. 

I felt unabashedly proud of myself as I got back in the car. I had peeled my boys away from their iPads, hauled them into the forest, facilitated the use of hand tools and the practice of taking turns, and we had a freshly-cut, wild Christmas tree to show for it. 

It wasn’t until we got home and wrestled it into an upright posture in the tree stand that I realized what an ugly tree it was. Out on that windy cliffside road, amidst a sea of manzanitas and rocks, it had looked like a beacon of Christmas spirit. Here in my dining room, though, it was crooked and patchy and lopsided and frail. The photos I had attempted to send from the forest road to my parents and a few close friends had been sent on a delay due to the lack of service, and by the time I saw the responses I saw that they unanimously laughed at my full size Charlie Brown tree. They were right. I had just been too proud of our adventure to see it until now. 

The kids admired it for about three seconds before bounding outside to jump on the trampoline, and in the stillness of the dining room in this little rental house I’d called home for just 90 days, I looked at my Christmas tree and cried. 

I cried at how ugly it was, and how proud I was in spite of it. I cried at the grief of being only half of my kids’ two homes now, and at the relief of not having to pretend that I’m fine anymore. I cried for how uncertain even the most immediate future felt, and for the assurance of the quiet but unshakable feeling that we’re all going to be ok. I cried over the realization that my parents would not be spending Christmas around this tree with me due to COVID, and for the simple poetry of having used my dad’s saw to cut it down in the first place. I cried for all that has been lost since the last time I looked at a Christmas tree, and for the gratitude of what remains. 

It is the finest Christmas tree I’ve ever had.   

Words and photo by Anna Quinlan.