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The One With the Chaos Tree
Now that we're getting oh so close to Christmas, how's your tree doing?
Cat pulled it over yet? Kids eaten all the chocolates off it? Fairy lights fizzled out? I was gazing at our tree the other evening, in an obligatory Baileys + Eastenders induced coma, and realised it's pretty much a visual representation of my actual soul. There's some glitter left, sure, but it's sparse and clinging.
During my subsequent pre-bedtime doom scroll, I came across this video by @tsierraauthor (let's not dwell too much on how the algorithm penetrated my brain for this to show up on my feed). I chuckled when I saw it and I've been chuckling ever since.
Quite reasonably, she is asking what on earth aesthetically balanced trees are doing in people's houses when they should, in fact, be in a catalogue for posh sofas. "This is not for home use," she says, "I need a Chaos Tree."
That's when I realised that even though I admit to being a former Aesthetic Tree Champion (we were all young and foolish once, right?), I am now full-on Chaos Tree. If I'm going to have a glitter-shedding, fairy-lit structure in my living room for an entire month then it sure as hell needs to tell an interesting story.
Give me rough and ready salt dough blobs the kids made when they were nippers; give me broken snowflakes that realistically could be wielded at have-a-go burglars; give me Poundland mirrorballs that distribute actual health hazards around the base of the tree on the regs; give me pebbles from the local beach yet to be scrubbed clean of seaweed dregs.
Give me a Chaos Tree.
Chaos Trees are just easier. In my former Aesthetic Tree days, I'd be a living, breathing tangle of stress as I attempted that ever-elusive approach of allow-the-kids-to-help-whilst-striving-for-a-Debenhams-style-result. It was never going to end well and Debenhams would have actively disowned me. Why did nobody tell me it was ok to rebel?
Instead, I've gradually found this out for myself over the years. As I slide haphazardly into middle-age, bringing an abundance of perimenopausal symptoms along for the ride, I realise there is, indeed more to life than a perfectly and aesthetically balanced Christmas tree. That the decorating sesh itself is less likely to ignite the melodious genius of the Bublé and it's more probable that McGowan himself will be resurrected in an explosion of wooden lolly sticks and sequin-stuffed salt dough.
And let's face it, who could argue that Little Lad's one-eyed, triangular, barely-there 'Rudolph' should have a prime spot?
And I can't help thinking that the mindfulness attitude of accepting things as they are could be helpful here. If things are chaos, let them be chaos. If there's no money / energy / resources to 'improve' on whatever the hell you did last year, then so be it. Life is so much easier when you don't fight. At least, when you don't fight for the things that really don't matter. I've decided I will allow my tree to be the very embodiment of chaos so I can preserve my fighting spirit for things that do actually matter like the patriarchy / inequality / the last bottle of Baileys in Tesco.
I even chose not to fight Little Lad when he suggested that this year we replace our ONLY vaguely sophisticated ornament (aka the glittering, shimmering star at the top of the tree) for an angel. But not just any angel. An angel that has graced our screen over the last four months as we went on a truly impressive Netflix marathon that was wholly age-inappropriate yet also an opportunity for mother-son bonding I could not pass up. Here is a picture of said angel. And I think it adds to the Chaos Tree ideology, right?
So, as I sign off in order to go embrace the chaos of the Yardimci Christmas, I'd love you to treat this blog post as your invite to do the same. Somehow, and I can't fully explain how this magic works, the more we embrace the chaos, the more peace we feel inside. I don't know, maybe it's actual Christmas magic? I'll ask Shane once he's had a chance to shake off all the lolly sticks.
Go well, my beauties, and Merry Christmas to you,
Abi
xxx
NOTE:
I'm now an Amazon Affiliate which means I can help fund my blog and socials content when people click through one of my links to buy a product from Amazon. If you'd like to buy any of the items I recommend below, I'd be over the moon. Thank you, beauty.
Bargain Christmas tree to get your chaos started: https://amzn.to/3BOsj0c (Amazon)
Warm white tree lights (like the ones I have): https://amzn.to/3P5a1uV (Amazon)
Baileys (because, why not?): https://amzn.to/3DrJc1n (Amazon)
Baubles in ALL the colours: https://amzn.to/3Pch9Fy (Amazon)
Make the Christmas chaos real by making your own baubles: https://amzn.to/4iGm6Et (Amazon)
Show your love for Shane by wearing this T-shirt: https://amzn.to/4ftw5Km (Amazon)
P.S. If you enjoyed this blog post then make sure you sign up to get ALL Abigail's bookish news as and when it happens. You'll also bag yourself a FREE copy of Life Is Yours - the first book in the Life Is Yours Trilogy. Sign up here
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