Seeing red and feeling blue over pink Christmas trees
By Burton W. Cole
I am NOT tickled pink over this one. It makes me blue. Or seeing red without the green.
According gift and ornament retailer Unifury, online searches for “Pink Christmas Tree” shot up 286 percent over the last six months.
Thanks, Barbie. What a doll.
Barbie and I were born the same year. We're both in our mid-60s, but she's held up a lot better than I have. (Rumor has it that a lot of plastic is involved.)
At our age, we have no business making anything jump 268 percent. Leaping leads to hip replacements and doctor visits, and those numbers already have climbed enough.
Besides, it's not even Thanksgiving yet, so I'm not at all ready to think about Christmas, much less a pink one.
Global warming experts say the odds of a white Christmas are decreasing, but I thought that meant we'd see green instead.
Barbie and all her friends have been a mainstay on toy store shelves for more decades than I care to count (being the same age but with a whole lot less favorable body shaping).
When the “Barbie” movie flooded theaters this year, the world seemed awash in pink.
If the Grinch was going to steal something…
I grew up with real Christmas trees, the kind that came into the house green in December and left behind brown needles that kept poking sock feet clear through April.
My very stylish grandmother acquired a silver foil artificial tree in the 1960s, and decorated it with blue bulbs. No pine smell, but no pokey pine needles either.
After I left home, my folks found a fiber optic number that glowed yellow, then orange, then red, then purple, then blue, then green, then... well, pretty much every primary and secondary color. Pink was not one of the hues.
But it’s not just Barbie the Pink. Searches for a Taylor Swift Christmas are up by 220%, according to Unifury.
Please, she’s already hijacked football. At least Swifties are more colorful than Barbzillas (or whatever we call Barbie fans. Barbary pirates, maybe?).
“Expect to see ornaments and décor that are inspired by Swift’s Eras tour, including purples, pinks green and oranges … we can expect to see lots of blue and soft green tones to be popular among fans,” a Unifury spokesperson spoke as a person.
For me, the Christmas tree should be big and green and looks like it was pelted by a junk drawer full of memories. The tree is a pine-scented scrapbook peppered with a myriad of ornaments, none of which match, but every one of which tells a story.
Some commemorate a couple’s first Christmas and others, baby’s first Christmas. Some are plaster casts of a kindergartener’s hand print. Zoo trips, sports teams, movies, books — all represented on the tree with dangling elephants, basketballs, spaceships and spy glasses. I even hang the ornaments I dug out of boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal three or four decades ago.
A Christmas tree is the winter version of what a refrigerator is the rest of the year — a family center to hang pictures, awards, letters, drawings and all manner of decorations that all tell tales about us as a family.
So if we’re going to start packing pink trees into our houses, I don’t care what the song says, I’m going to cry and pout.
Better yet, how about if we leave the trees — pink, green, blue, vermillion, puce or azure — alone and concentrate on turkey and pumpkin pie? And give thanks that it won’t be a pink Christmas at my house. My Cap’n Crunch ornament wouldn’t like that.
If you find a Play-Doh Christmas tree, contact Burt immediately at burton.w.cole @ gmail. Com, or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.