Episode
Why I'm Not Putting Up My Gigantic Christmas Tree
- Podcast
- The Nuance Diaries
- Published
- Dec 4, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 715
- Processing state
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Summary
The basic answer? I don’t want to. If someone wheeled a beautifully decorated tree into my house, I wouldn’t turn them away. If I woke up to a perfectly decorated Hallmark movie-style house in Vermont, I’d be delighted (and also a little terrified that I’d been robbed/kidnapped.) But because life is not a holiday movie , the job of decorator/mover/organizer falls to me. And this year, I’m putting in my notice. I really do historically love the holidays. I love cheesy Christmas movies, gorgeous, elaborate light displays, and sugar cookies. I love Mariah Carey, tinsel, and coquito. Up until recently, I loved putting up a 7-foot tree with a collection of ornaments that could fill a row or two at Home Goods. Yes, that’s right; 7 feet. I followed in my family’s tradition and bought a synthetic tree for my big girl apartment during the pandemic in 2020. Ever since then, I’ve looked forward to putting it up every year. One year, I even got a bedroom tree for double the Christmas spirit. In addition to the tree(s), I’ve also collected a variety of signs, door hangers, figurines and the like. One of the signs proudly reads ‘This girl loves Christmas.’ The thing is, I also love lying horizontal on my couch. I find reality pretty difficult. I find the business of getting out of bed and getting on with the day really hard. I find picking up my phone to be a mammoth fucking struggle. The number on my inbox. The friends who won’t see me anymore. The food pictures and porn videos, the bombings, and beheadings, the moral ambivalence you have to have to just be able to carry on with your day. I find the knowledge that we’re all just atoms and one day we’ll stop and be dirt in the ground, I find that overwhelmingly disappointing. - People, Places & Things by Duncan Macmillan (A Play) I,…