Every December, people get misty-eyed about holiday decor. You know, those delicate heirlooms you lovingly unwrap, hang with reverence, and then promptly forget about until one of your kids breaks it and suddenly it’s the end of civilization.

But for my family, Christmas decorations don’t just sparkle.
They trigger full-blown flashbacks.

When I was little, Christmas usually meant packing up and heading to Canada to see family. Other years, we’d end up in Hollywood Beach, Florida, with my grandparents, because nothing says “holy season” like palm trees and retirees power-walking in tube socks and sun visors that could double as satellite dishes. But one year, the magic came to us. My grandparents flew into Chicago for a few weeks of holiday chaos, and honestly, someone should’ve handed out helmets, knee pads, and liability waivers.

Back when airports let you stand at the gate like you were greeting royalty, my brother, sister, and I  were plastered against the giant glass windows. Our breath fogged the panes like Dickensian orphans, waiting for the Air Canada plane with the massive red maple leaf emblem on its tail. I was so excited I had to pee, but I refused to leave my post because what if my grandparents came out early? What if I missed the shrill battle cry of my grandmother, a sound powerful enough to pierce Helen Keller’s ears?

The second they stepped off the plane, the spoiling began. McDonald’s trips (because rebellion tastes like fries), mysterious money appearing in our pockets like magical bribes, and, most critically, piles of contraband chocolates! The good kind from Canada. Real Cadbury chocolate, Smarties(Canada’s answer to M&M’s), Coffee Crisp, plus Baci chocolates from Italy, because my grandparents weren’t amateurs. They also arrived with “fashion-forward” outfits direct from Italian boutiques, clothing clearly tailored for motionless porcelain dolls, not real children with limbs who bent at the waist or attempted basic locomotion.

In Canada, my grandparents were practically royalty. We received VIP treatment everywhere: grocery stores, bakeries, soda factories, you name it. It was as if they ran the kind of underground hospitality cartel that made us children feel like visiting dignitaries. Once they landed in Chicago, the tremendous pressure to manufacture an equally thrilling experience had to match that level of grandeur. Without access to the fan club, the freebies, or the local celebrity status, the competition was fierce.

But that Christmas? It wasn’t the treats, or the adventures, or the pockets full of contraband quarters.

It was The Incident.

My mom was trying to take a wholesome family photo in front of the tree. Meanwhile, my grandmother insisted the tree was crooked. My father insisted her head was crooked. They were communicating in their usual “yelling but not fighting” dialect. My grandfather, who had the survival instincts of a man who’d rather risk bodily injury than endure another minute of debate, decided to “fix” the tree.

He leaned in.
He tugged left.
He tugged right.
He performed what can only be described as the Holiday Hokey Pokey inside a tinsel bush.

Beads of sweat gathered. His breathing turned into a winded accordion. And just as someone squawked, “A smidge to the right!” he lost his balance, grabbed the literal center of the tree for support, and drove it straight onto our heads.

One moment: picture-perfect Christmas.
Next moment: We were trapped inside a collapsing pine avalanche, tangled in lights and ornaments, screaming with the conviction of children who were positive we were about to die under a pile of tinsel. The scream you only produce when childhood magic and mortal fear collide.

We survived.
The tree survived, mostly.
A few ornaments perished in battle.

And unwittingly, we invented the world’s first Christmas Light Immersion Experience years before artists started charging $50 a ticket for the privilege of being blinded by LEDs.

To this day, I still have several of those old ornaments. They are absolutely hideous. I hang them in the back of the tree because nostalgia has limits, but I hang them nonetheless.

Here’s the kicker: those exact plastic, paint-chipped monstrosities now sell for outrageous amounts online. Apparently, “vintage holiday décor” is trendy. People are out here paying top dollar for the same ugly baubles our families tried to quietly bury behind tinsel in 1978.

But honestly? No price tag could ever match the real value of those ridiculous ornaments.

They hold the sound of my grandmother shrieking in perfect pitch.
They hold the memory of my grandfather falling face-first into a Douglas fir like a kamikaze elf.
They hold our family, loud, imperfect, completely chaotic, and unforgettable.

And that’s why we decorate.
Not for the aesthetics.
Not for Instagram.
Definitely not for the crooked tree that nearly ended us.

We decorate because a box of old ornaments is really a box of proof.
Proof that we lived, that we laughed, that someone loved us enough to make memories worth hanging front and center or hidden in the back.

Someday, someone will unwrap one of those hideous little relics and say,
“Why on earth did she keep this thing?”

And maybe, if we’ve done life right, they’ll also smile.