When I was a kid, back when Vesuvias was finally cooling off, my two sisters and I always decorated our Christmas tree. They, being senior, usually had the fun parts, including placing the star at the top of the tree (actually, it was just a silver icicle-like thingy- don't ask). I was relegated to providing the tinsel.
I HATED tinsel! And we used the same lousy, used, tinsel year after year! And every skimpy piece had to hang straight. My sisters laughed and jeered as I worried over knotted pieces, unstringing individual strings in tedious frustration. So year after year I suffered until I had a growth spurt and grew bigger than my sisters and decided to be creative in my post of tinsel decorator.
I threw it. From ten feet away, great wads of the silvery glory was hurled, with prejudice, into the Christmas tree until the used tinsel was all gone, rearranged as thick clots of glimmering stuff. And yes, I was fired from the honor amidst name-calling from my two older siblings. Their epithets might as well have been the Hallelujah Chorus.
And that is why you will never see tinsel on any Christmas tree in my family. And its absence does not make my heart grow fonder. Merry Christmas!
