I Threw a Holiday Tantrum, and I Thoroughly Enjoyed Myself

I may or may not have kicked down our Christmas tree

Kerala Taylor
Human Parts
Published in
6 min readDec 22, 2023

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A few weeks ago, I kicked down our Christmas tree. I not only kicked it down, I then proceeded to kick it multiple times as it lay prostrate on the ground. It was kind of like that scene in Office Space, that scene in which Peter and his coworkers kick the crap out of their office printer. If someone had handed me a baseball bat, I definitely would have put it to use.

How, you may ask, had this Christmas tree so grossly offended me? Well, its trunk was too narrow for our Christmas tree stand. Did this particular tree intend to make my life more difficult? I couldn’t tell you. But the glibness of its slender trunk definitely felt personal.

You see, this particular tree was supposed to make my life easier. It had been specifically purchased to minimize complications. Over the last year — well, 12 years really, but particularly this past one — my life had become horrendously complicated, and I was on the lookout for a way, any way, to simplify things.

Although I appreciate holiday decorations, I’ve never enjoyed the legwork that goes into the actual decorating part. And this particular year, everything that I used to find moderately tedious has become impossibly overwhelming. I felt…

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Kerala Taylor
Human Parts

Award-winning writer. Interrupting notions of what it means to be a mother, woman, worker, and wife. Subscribe: https://keralataylor.substack.com