It’s funny for me to think about these colors – red and green – because when it comes time for the year-end holidays, I would often contemplate on how these colors would look on my braces.

I wore braces during most of my first undergraduate degree before forcing the orthodontist to take them off because I found out he was never going to take it off unless I got the expensive cranial-facial surgery, which no insurance would cover.

Years later, in 2022, my braces was back on because I was having problems with my gums and missing teeth. I paid the entire sum upfront so there would be no delay. This time, the promise was the braces would be off in 33 months. So far, it’s been about 19 months and each time I went to the orthodontist, I told myself, “This time, you’re going to pick a different color than silver,” only to end up with silver every time because I wanted the braces to blend in, not stand out.

A few weeks ago, when I went to orthodontist for my last check-up of 2023, I once again went in with a desire of getting a new color for my braces. This time, it was the holiday colors of red and green but darn that inner voice, telling me I would look silly in those colors, and I exited the orthodontist office with the same old silver color on my braces.

In my opinion and I don’t know who came up with it but I think red and green are like the most perfect color-pairing, whether it’s influenced by the holidays or not. My aunt took this picture with her phone when she and I were out Christmas lights sightseeing in 2016. I didn’t have a smart phone back then. The only camera I had was a small point-and-shoot that died in the sub-freezing temperatures.

Of all the aunts and uncles on my mom side of the family, this is the fun aunt. Despite her constant asking the dumbest questions in world like a 7-year-old, she’s the go-to companion when it comes to things like Christmas lights sightseeing.

I haven’t put up my Christmas tree this year nor am I going to. In fact, 2021 was the last year I’ve put up the tree, even then, it wasn’t as elaborate as this one.

The truth is, it isn’t that I don’t want to put the tree up, it’s because this old tree has caused me too many problems. In 2021, after plugging in the lights, I discovered about 80% of the lights were out – only the top and bottom remained lit. It turned out the lights were the old incandescent bulbs that are no longer in use. These days, it’s all about LED.

After buying all the tools to try to repair the problems, I gave up, mainly because I wasn’t mentally and emotionally strong enough to repair the tree and listen to mom’s shouting and screaming in my ears about my stupidity and stubbornness of wanting to fix the tree.

I feel like I just found the root cause of not wanting to put up a Christmas tree ever.

There have been quite a few memorable Christmases and holidays in my life and they were memorable for so many reasons, whether for good or bad. All I know is they were all great ways to mark an end to a year.