This story begins as the sun goes down on a stale, cold November night. The type of night where everything in the world seems to have a grey tint, and you hit every red light on your way home from work. A woman pulls her old Lumina mini-van into a dirt lot. The sun is now far enough covered in the horizon that her headlights are on, but aren't doing much. Only letting others on the road know of her vehicle's presence. As she pulls into the lot her wheels roll through the ruts made by the many cars and trucks that have preceded her. She avoids the bigger potholes concealed by tan, muddy puddles left by yesterday's rain. The tires make an all-too-familiar crackling sound as they kick up gravel while pulling into the closest parking spot she could find. She puts the car in park and lets out a long disheartened sigh as she turns the key to kill the engine. The front door of the van swings open. She steps out and looks closely at the giant inflatable Santa Claus with his right hand up and his gaze set upward as if he was waving hello to someone in the sky. From the road she couldn't see the mud splattered on him by traffic or the grey water spots left by the rain. Close-up, the big, bright Santa is just as bleak as the world around her.
In this part of the country, the holiday season is less of a white Winter wonderland, and more of a muddy, grey mess. The sun is too cold to warm the surface, but just warm enough to keep all precipitation from freezing. Even when the snow falls on the city, it just melts into slush in the daytime, then freezes into ice in the evening. Although its effect isn't universal throughout the city, the weather takes a heavy toll on the population's mood. It's hard to find a more depressing time to visit. People act as if a stranger is their enemy instead of an unknown neighbor. Dogs are kicked, children are harshly shushed, and spouses are given cold shoulders. Houses are still decorated with lights, but they are merely a facade. The colors adorned in trees and across rain gutters are an attempt to hide the dismay that the weather and holiday stress build in the minds of the people living within the walls of the decorated homes. The sigh that the women let out as she turned off her mini-van is a regular occurrence in most homes on most days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The woman has decided to pick up her family's Christmas tree on the way home from work. Her husband will be thrilled to avoid the slow selection process. Her children will probably cry because they wanted to help find the perfect tree. Finding the perfect tree is the last thing on her mind. In fact, she is tempted to grab the first one she sees and run with it. Throwing it into the back of her van, then speeding off into the stark, overcast sunset. Of course, that won't happen. Part of the holiday stress is the need to make Christmas morning look and feel as romantic as everybody expects it to be. She walks down the path, using a keen eye to find the tree that is the right height and with the least amount of unsightly blemishes. As she stops to get a closer look at a possible candidate a man on his cellphone brushes past her in a hurry, knocking her purse to the ground. He looks back and mouths sorry while continuing to move away into the parking lot. She bends over to pick up her purse, telling off the man with the cellphone in the privacy of her own mind.
As the sun begins to fade completely out of sight and darkness starts to settle on the city, the Christmas tree dealer brings out floodlights. The Santa Claus inflatable begins to glow, causing his cheeks to become even more red than before. Those in the road can now easily make out the dirt and mud specks all over his body. The floodlights light up the trees better than the sun, giving the woman a better view of what the tree will look like in the artificial light of her living room. She begins to smile as she walks around the lot, still searching for the right tree.
After finding her perfect Christmas tree, the woman walks up to the camper where the tree dealer has a cashbox ready. There is a campfire burning to the left of the woman with two teen boys surrounding it. She gives the man a credit card and he walks up the steps into the camper. One of the two boys looks over at the woman and they connect eyes for a few seconds. His chapped lips move into the form of a forced smile. The woman looks away. She tries to remember the number tied to one of the tree's branches. She tells them the number and they begin to walk in the direction of the tree to help load it into her car. One of the boys playfully kicks the other underneath his foot as he walks, causing him to trip up a bit. They let out a few laughs and begin talking quietly to one another. They get about halfway to the parking lot before the man comes out to tell the woman that her card had been declined. He says he ran it twice and it declined each time. He tells her that he doesn't take checks.
She didn't have any cash, so the boys had to return the tree to its original spot with the others. After it was back in place, they returned to their spots by the fire, staring at the flickering colors. The woman decided to just go home. No need to call the credit card company, she knew they must have gone over their limit last weekend while shopping for Christmas gifts. She wasn't stressed about the card declining, they had the money to pay it off, she just wished that her last minute decision to buy a tree had worked out. She wanted some time at the end of her day to just relax. To forget the stress of the season. To cross another item off of her endless holiday to-do list. The wheels of her Lumina crackled out of the parking lot. The giant, glowing Santa waved goodbye to the sky as she drove out of the lot and down the street.
The woman wouldn't return to the dirt lot to buy her Christmas tree. Instead, the next day while cruising the clearance aisle at Shopko she noticed a different sort of perfect tree. One that could permanently cross the Christmas tree off of her holiday to-do list. This perfect tree was made of metal, wire and nylon. It did not have a trunk nor did it shed needles. She did not need to water the tree, because it was not living. At the end of the Christmas season it fit perfectly back into the cardboard box it lived in before being purchased. The manufacturer would say that the tree was immortal, but in fact the tree was dead, and the box was it's coffin. She could throw out the old, metal tree stand that had been used since before the children were born. The woman kept the tree skirt, but it's function became fashion.
The tree that she had chosen at the dirt lot was never purchased. It became firewood for the Christmas tree salesman and the teen boys he employed. It gave them warmth during breaks from cleaning up the lot they temporarily inhabited. The giant, inflatable Santa Claus waved goodbye as he deflated to the ground. Soon enough, the dirt lot was empty again. The trailer that the salesman lived in for three cold, Winter weeks crackled away, and a sign on the property that said "for sale" took it's rightful place, where Santa stands each Christmas season.
