Where I’m Writing From eli.cranor@gmail.com December 25, 2022 Eli Cranor is an Arkansas novelist whose debut novel, Don’t Know Tough, is available wherever books are sold. Don’t Know Tough made @USATODAYBooks’s “Best of 2022” list and the @nytimes “Best Crime Fiction” for 2022 Cranor can be reached using the “Contact” page at elicranor.com and found on Twitter @elicranor

I’m writing from the glow of a plastic Christmas tree.

The tree came pre lit. 500 LED lights with five different settings: color, white, strobe, strobing color, strobing white. My wife likes white best. I prefer color.

I don’t like the tree. I don’t like hauling it up from the basement each November. I don’t like how it breaks down into three sections and the whole thing fits into a green plastic bag.

Christmas trees are supposed to be messy. They’re supposed to be real.

You’re supposed to go out in the woods and cut down a Douglas Fir with your bare hands. We did that once when I was a boy. The next year we went to a tree farm up past Dover. We still cut our tree down, but the old man who ran the place shook and holed the tree for us.

A few years later, we started getting our trees from Walmart, or maybe Lowe’s if we waited too late in the season and the selection was bad.

Buying a tree from a superstore is a far cry from cutting one down in the woods, but there was one point the Cranor family wasn’t willing to concede — we would always have a real tree.

The whole, ornate process was part of our Christmas tradition. Once we finally got the tree home, we still had to put it up, and just like everything else in my childhood, there were rules.

The lights went on first. Dad didn’t want them bunched together. They needed to be evenly spaced and go all the way around. After a few tries, he’d stand back, take his glasses off, and squint.

It was something he’d learned studying art, a way to see the shape of the lights, the layout.

After the lights, it was time to start on the ornaments. Big ornaments went on the bottom, small ones at the top. All the way to the top, and all the way around. The back of the tree faced a window. Dad would go to the street and squint again. When he came back in, we’d move the lights and ornaments around.

The tinsel came last.

The frosting on the cake, but not just any cake, an elaborate, immaculately designed, three-tier cake that could fall apart at any moment. The rule for the lights and the ornaments held for the tinsel as well — no bunching.

The tinsel came packaged in plastic bags. Mom and I both got a bag. Dad would come around behind us, spacing our clumps out.

When the last piece of tinsel had finally been strung over the perfect branch, Dad would turn the lights out. We’d huddle there together, our fingers sticky with sap, and bask in the glow of our handiwork.

It was a painstaking process, one that caused its fair share of family disputes, but our trees were always beautiful. I’m not sure if the same can be said of the plastic tree in my living room now.

The lights are spaced properly, but there’s not any tinsel and the ornaments are wonky. More than half hang near the bottom of the tree, three, maybe four feet off the floor. As high as my kids can reach.

Next year they’ll be taller, and maybe, if they’re ready, it’ll be time for us to get a real tree.