Why I Despise Christmas Trees
By Ridley Longsworth
Every December, like clockwork, they appear. Glittering monstrosities in living rooms, malls, and town squares. Towering green lies wrapped in fake joy and overpriced LED lights.
I didn’t always hate them. As a kid, I felt the magic. The way the twinkling lights blinked like stars, how the room smelled of pine and cinnamon, and how presents bloomed beneath it while we stared in awe.
But magic has a short shelf life, especially when it gets packed away in boxes marked “XMAS” every January.
It was our first Christmas after Dad left. Mom was trying to keep the traditions alive. She bought the biggest tree in the lot, a Douglas fir so wide it barely fit through the front door. We strung it with memories: the handmade ornaments, the one emblazoned with “World’s Best Dad” that we all pretended not to see.
It fell in the night. Glass across the carpet. The lights still flickering on their sides. Mom sweeping with a dustpan before dawn, silent. Like the tree had finally given up pretending, too.
We never bought a real tree again. After that, it was a plastic one from the basement that reeked of mildew and disappointment. I watched it lean against the wall year after year, like it couldn’t bear to stand up on its own anymore. It became a symbol of our collective exhaustion, dressed up in blinking lights to hide how broken it really was.
And let’s not even start on the commercial ones—the trees that are dressed up like department store mannequins, paraded on social media, and used as props in holiday-themed influencer content. They're not about joy anymore. They're about optics. A curated illusion of togetherness. Because nothing says “family” like smiling in front of a tree while barely speaking to each other the rest of the day.
So no, I don’t hate Christmas. I hate what the tree pretends it means.
This year, I didn’t put one up. No ornaments. No lights. Just a quiet apartment and a candle that smells like pine, because, okay, the scent is nice.
And maybe that’s enough.
