Nov 19, 2013 4 min read

Christmas trees, in the Miller household, look very different every year. Sets of ornaments make an appearance, then are packed away, never to be seen again until another decade. Some color schemes work better than others, as you will learn in the tale of the green and gold tree.

I had wanted a green and gold tree for a long time. Of course, most Christmas trees are green, but this one, in my mind’s eye, was to have green lights and golden decorations. Little green incandescent twinkle lights would have been ideal. However, while shopping at a grocery store in Ohio during a Christmas visit with the in-laws, strings of chunky green lights were drastically reduced. After returning home, we placed the lights on a shelf for Christmas yet to come.

That occasion arrived three years ago, but it happened to coincide with a busy, busy December, work-wise. The Miller household is not one of those that parks a Christmas tree in the living room during Thanksgiving weekend. We’re of the 12 Days of Christmas school, beginning in late December so the tree will stay up at least until the Feast of the Epiphany on Jan. 6, longer if the Steelers are headed to the Super Bowl. Little did we know what fate would bring the Steelers that year.

Although I’m an advocate of a fresh-cut Christmas tree, my husband rebelled, and I acquiesced. He dragged the fake tree out of storage and planted it in the living room at least a week before Noel. As Dec. 23 turned into Dec. 24, absolutely nothing adorned it. Holding up the process was the golden component: a pine-cone garland that I hadn’t yet constructed. There had been a controversy in the Miller household about how to join the pine cones. I wanted wire. Husband complained wire was too expensive and it wouldn’t work. At the craft store, I capitulated, buying yarn instead. A pine cone – the wooden rose, in its natural state – is brown, not gold, so I also bought a can of paint. The problem was that I didn’t have time to apply the paint until about 2 a.m. on Dec. 24. I placed old newspapers on the garage floor and sprayed away. The pungent fumes were overpowering. “Use in a well-ventilated area,” read the can’s instructions. A closed garage in winter likely is not what the manufacturer’s product liability legal eagles had in mind. The paint, luckily, was quick-drying, so during that interval, I escaped upstairs to wind the lights around the tree.

Back in the garage, the golden paint may have dried, but the overpowering chemical stench remained. I held my nose and wound yarn between the gilded petals. The garlands came together rather quickly, so I draped them on the boughs and plugged in the lights in the predawn darkness of the living room.

The effect was sickening. The odor of the paint and the garishness of the lights were stomach-turning. This was not the tree I envisioned. No one would confuse the smell of paint for fresh pine, but it was too late to turn back. I hauled out gold-colored ornaments and some green ones, hanging them as fast as I could, and headed back to bed after pulling this pre-Christmas all-nighter. Fortunately for family members, the redolence had abated by the time everyone was up and around. The story doesn’t end here.

There’s a post-Christmas coda.

We’ve had Christmas trees with lights that sputtered long before the holidays were over. This wasn’t the case with Green Tree, if citizens of that little borough in Allegheny County will pardon the reference. Those verdant lights shone on and on, through the New Year and into the post-season: Jan. 15, Steelers, 31, Ravens, 24; Jan. 23, Steelers, 24, Jets, 19.

The Steelers’ opponent in Super Bowl XLV: the Green Bay Packers, whose colors are, what else? Green and gold.

The Steelers, of course, lost to the Packers by a score of 31 to 25. And they haven’t journeyed to a Super Bowl since.

Blame that green and gold tree.

Note to Miller household: Green and gold theme at Christmas? Never, ever again.