rowing up, our Christmas tree was a strangely humble thing covered in straw ornaments and real candles (never lit, of course). It was a lovingly rendered replica of Christmas trees my mother saw in Germany, where she spent two years cleaning floors and covering the countryside before surrendering to her suburban instincts and marrying my father. The tree was as quirky and rustic as she was: real apples hanging from the branches; a ribbon of popcorn and cranberries strung together by my brother and me (and our pinpricked, bloodied index fingers). It had none of the gaudy showmanship I saw in my friends’ homes--strewn tinsel and burbling lights and geeky school pictures rimmed with glitter. Ours was a homespun tree, everything real, made by hand. Now, you’d probably call it “organic.” At the time, we just called it “weird.” Of course, I now have a warm spot in my heart for its sweet understatement, its stubborn resistance to capitalist pressures. Back then, I thought it sucked all the donkey dick in the world.

Come on, I was a kid. I didn’t want sweet straw birds woven by ruddy-faced Kinder in der Schwarzvald. I wanted more sparkle than a red-light district. I didn’t want Helga, the oddly stoic Hausfrau made of hay. I wanted authentic Christmas characters, like Santa Claus and Frosty and the Abominable Snowman. I wanted a real Christmas tree, not some chubby thing veering off diagonally into the wall. (And by “real,” of course, I mean “fake.”) I wanted trains that whistled and a blinding, gi-normous star at the top of the tree. (What did my mother top our tree with? It was like a straw cross, with berries and shit.) God, that tree embarrassed me. It was the apotheosis of my family’s failures—to fit in, to be normal for once. Already my mother insisted on baking bread instead of buying it, on homecooked meals we ate at the table instead of frozen ones in front of the TV. And we couldn’t even do Christmas right! As long as that tree stood, I refused to invite friends over to the house. I was such a self-conscious idiot. Christ. Can you imagine if I’d been Jewish?

The episode with the Christmas tree had a few effects on me. For one, it gave me a hard-won appreciation for my family’s uniqueness. For another, it helped me realize that rotting apples can make a room smell like delicious cider. Most important, however, it fostered an abiding fetish for all things sparkly and glittered. My mother can have der tannenbaum of her dreams. I support her. I applaud her. But my Christmas tree is made of pink tinsel and covered in ornaments with all the subtlety and sophistication of Lil’ Jon. There is nothing “normal” about my taste in holiday decorations. It is as eccentric, and stubborn, as my mother’s. I just happen to enjoy rotating stands, disco balls, and flashing lights as opposed to, say, old-world charm. The good news is that these days, I can decorate for Christmas however I want. It’s a liberating feeling. Blinking lights in the bedroom, shiny raspberry balls hung from the mantle with pride. So I hope you enjoy the same freedom of expression this holiday season. And if you happen to see some sparkly piece of seasonally appropriate fabulosity that you can’t live without? Pick me up one, too, would ya?