I'm Allergic to Christmas

And my partner has Elf-DNA

My partner Meg loves Christmas more than Santa loves cookies. Each year she spends weeks wrapping gifts. It’s not that she has an unusually high number of gifts to wrap. It’s that she’s addicted to wrapping everything she can get her tape on. If she’s giving you tea, she’s likely to wrap each individual tea bag. If she’s giving you socks, don’t be surprised to find each sock wrapped separately. The best gift I can give Meg each year is to let her wrap the gifts that I got for her. 

No one on the planet could beat Meg in a wrap battle. Everytime she receives a gift, she saves the ribbons, the bows, and the box [and maybe the paper, if it’s in pristine condition]. All summer she sits on our porch in a bikini, Googling, “beautiful christmas wrapping ideas.” This year she took it to a whole new level, purchasing an orchard of dried fruit to weave into the bows. Our gifts look like they were wrapped in a log cabin in front of a wood burning stove in the 1800’s by Martha Stewart’s great great great great grandmother.  

To Meg, the ultimate gift to decorate is the Christmas tree. Her collection of ornaments, lights and garland takes up half the storage space in our garage. Because my immune system is weakened by chemotherapy and it’s too risky to spend the holiday with family this year, we put extra effort into picking out the perfect tree. By extra effort I mean we smelled every tree in the lot, searching for one fragrant enough to fill each air molecule in our home with memories of advent calendars, sleigh rides, roasted chestnuts, gingerbread houses, skate parties on the frozen pond in the forest behind my childhood home in northern Maine.

When decorating the Christmas tree, Meg considers the position of each ornament with the focus of a professional golfer eyeing the angles of the green on the final hole of the US Open. When I hang an ornament, I can see her in the corner of my eye forcing her hands behind her back to keep herself from guiding my arm the way a parent might guide a child riding a bicycle for the very first time. If ever I step out of the room to make a cup of tea, I’ll return to find the ornaments I hung, rehung on “better branches.” 

This year, after the tree was decorated perfectly, and Meg was as happy as a little elf, I started sneezing. A few hours later I was sneezing more. The next day I woke up so congested I felt like I was breathing underwater. When chemo drops my immune markers to concerning levels, I get a call from the nurse with instructions on how to keep myself as healthy as possible. The first thing the nurse says is, ``Remove all cut flowers from your home.” 

“Is a Christmas tree a giant cut flower?” I asked Meg. “Do I have a cold or am I reacting to the tree? Am I allergic to Christmas?” 

I was sitting on the downstairs couch, trying to Google the answer to my questions when I looked out the window and saw a Christmas tree flying through the air. Meg had removed all the ornaments, walked out to our upstairs porch, and heaved our beloved tree out of our house. When I raced upstairs to see if she was OK, I found her stringing Christmas lights on a flimsy plastic fern. I burst into tears. “I’ve never,” I said, “in my whole life, loved anyone more.” 

Dear reader,  I wish you an imperfect holiday season, full of the kind of love that makes breathing easier. Full of the kind of people who fill your lungs with air. 

P.S Since the initial writing of this, it turned out to be a cold. I’m not, in fact, allergic to Christmas. Sadly the tree could not be salvaged, as it is buried under a foot of Colorado snow in negative seventeen degree weather. And, just an hour ago, Meg said she had a gift for me. I came downstairs to a giant box, inside––an artificial tree––eternal as my love for her, and Meg’s love for Christmas.