Features

Photo Credit: Mark Lund/Getty Images

By Jonathan Soroff

They say you can judge people by their shoes. We say you can judge them by their tree (or lack thereof). 
And what’s more in keeping with the holiday season than being judgmental?

All White Lights
You’re either Protestant or Catholic and of Northern European extraction, or wish to be perceived as such, even if you’re black or your last name is Goldberg (hence the Hanukkah bush). A traditionalist, you’re sure that white lights are the only thing Santa would consider liturgically correct, and any deviation from the basic green, white and red color scheme you secretly deem tacky. (Touches of silver and gold are OK, as long as they look expensive.) You’re smolderingly resentful when the perfectly tasteful, carefully chosen gift you present from under the tree is reciprocated with something even more tasteful and carefully chosen. Your ornaments veer toward the nostalgic: choo-choo trains, bicycles, angels, etc. If time allows, you string cranberries and popcorn for a Victorian effect, and you’re sure that Norman Rockwell would’ve painted your home had he seen it. You can never look at the Italian flag without thinking of Christmas.  

Colored Lights
You’re an exuberant free spirit who sees Christmas as a Disney extravaganza. Nonlinear thinking is your game, so you always forget to buy a gift for someone glaringly obvious, like your mom. For you, the highlight of the season is watching every special with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, and you insist that your sullen teenagers watch them with you. Snoopy figurines wearing Santa hats make you smile. The outside of your house is festooned with candy canes, inflatable snowmen and a lighting display that has made your neighbors threaten legal action. Your doctor should probably modify your dosage. If none of this describes you, you may simply be color-blind.

No Christmas Tree
You’re either non-Christian, agnostic, atheist, or have an abject hatred of vacuuming pine needles. Burning incense makes as much sense to you as decorating a dead conifer, and you think Christmas is a hassle-free day to fly somewhere with either palm trees or good skiing. Regardless of your beliefs, you feel a twinge of schadenfreude when you watch your neighbor wrestle his Christmas tree out to the sidewalk for garbage collection.

Tabletop Trees
You have a dwarf fetish or are simply lazy. If the former, you own a figurine collection and a teacup poodle. If the latter, your idea of holiday cheer is a carton of eggnog. Because there’s not much room for presents under your tree, you don’t have to buy many, which you consider practical, virtuous and much easier to deal with than all that wrapping paper. Chances are, you live by yourself, and whether this is by choice or by circumstance, it allows you to eat cereal on Christmas morning in your underwear. You plan to plant your tree outside after the holidays and fantasize about watching it grow into a towering pine. You never actually get around to doing it.

Charlie Brown Tree
You have an affinity for the underdog and are drawn to the bird with the broken wing. You’re probably a yoga instructor or have flirted with the idea, however briefly. To you, the sound of the holidays is the sound of breaking glass, because your cat likes to swat the ornaments off your stunted Douglas fir. You’re the first person to buy holiday crafts from the differently abled kid down the street, and you’re blissfully unaware that he’s going to use the cash to buy video games. You try desperately to get along with your type-A sister during the holidays, if only to demonstrate how much more evolved you are, but while doing the dishes after Christmas dinner, you engage in a screaming match over issues dating back to childhood. You can’t wait for January so you can get that ugly thing out of your living room. 

Cut Your Own
You fancy yourself the rugged outdoorsy type and enjoy watching your family trudge through waist-deep snow. In truth, you’re primarily sedentary and either a heavy smoker, 25 pounds overweight, or both. As a result, while hiking into the field, you’re forced to stop frequently to ease your wheezing and pretend that you’re simply surveying the pristine wilderness. You pick the tree that looks like it’ll be easiest to strap to the roof of a Hyundai. The whole process makes you sweat profusely and you emanate steam on the car ride home, where you spend several hours trying to get your tree to remain upright in its stand. You brag about your adventure to everyone at work the next day, while inwardly swearing never to do it again. Precut tree lots make you angry. Your New Year’s resolution is to quit smoking and get into better shape. You won’t.

Hanukkah Bush
You’re Jewish, or at least partly Jewish, but see no reason why the goyim should have all the fun. Your holiday color scheme is silver and blue, and you like Swarovski-crystal Stars of David. You have at least two menorahs to balance things out, and while you insist on playing dreidel, you can never remember the rules. Instead of Hanukkah gelt, you receive Hanukkah guilt from your mother, who thinks it’s a disgrace you put up anything at all and purposefully leaves out one ingredient when telling you your grandmother’s potato latke recipe. You have presents under the tree for each day of the Festival of Lights, and on Christmas day, you go out for Chinese food and a movie. 

Fake Tree
You either live in Miami or morally object to cutting down a live tree (especially when the ones at Home Depot are so lifelike). If yours is one of those abstract, high-design, futuristic-looking pieces of sculpture, you’re a gay interior designer. If yours is one of those convincing Norwegian spruces, you smugly tell anyone who’ll listen that you don’t need to water it.  If yours is one of the pink metallic or other flashy varieties, you’re probably a gay interior designer with a highly developed sense of irony. Whatever your reasons, the fact that you have a fake tree points to the likelihood that you’ve told a lie within the past 24 hours, and you’re secretly terrified that Santa knows about it. 

Uniform Ornaments
Whether it’s Wedgwood or Walt Disney, if your tree is restricted to a single theme of decoration, you’ve spent too much time A) in the military, or B) watching the Home Shopping Network. You’re so anal-retentive that you use a level and a T square to wrap presents. Children are forbidden near your tree, and you take numerous photographs of it, which are indistinguishable from one year to the next. You’ve eaten the same thing for breakfast every morning for the past 12 years, and you only like snow before there are footprints.