Have you had a memorable Christmas tree disaster?

I had a near disaster with the first Christmas tree I ever put up on my own, alone in my Cambridge apartment.

By myself and without a car, I bought a six-foot tree and rolled it home a couple of miles in the snow on a two-wheeled suitcase cart. I bought a tree stand with three metal legs, strings of lights, a bunch of inexpensive Woolworth’s ornaments in boxes, and a dozen special ones chosen singly at Jordan Marsh.

I’d almost finished the whole tree-trimming exercise, trying to do everything according to tradition, and was feeling pretty well pleased with myself, when I just had to hang one last course of silvery icicles near the top. Standing on a chair, I lost my balance and fell into the tree. The whole thing went over, with me tangled up in it and the tree on top of me. One of the stand’s metal legs bent so sharply that there was no way to set it back up while I crawled out and recovered.

Somehow I managed to get my foot under the trunk, keeping it from going completely down. Nothing I could use as a prop was close by. An empty ornament box was across the room, just beyond my reach. I strained for it with every inch of my body. Just as in one of those escape scenes in a movie where the hero drops the keys, I stretched as hard as my body could possibly stretch. After maybe ten minutes, I finally caught the edge of the box with a fingernail and flipped it toward me.

Then I maneuvered it down to my feet and pushed it under the trunk to prop it up.

When I crawled out from under, I had to just sit and breathe for a while.

From this distance, decades later, I’m still not sure how I salvaged that tree. No Christmas tree mishap since has ever come close, even with pets and little kids. But it turned out all right in the end, except for a bunch of icicles that lay sideways on the branches instead of hanging up and down. One glass ornament broke, and that was it.

All the Woolworth’s ornaments (except one, saved as a souvenir) have been phased out since, but I still have the “special” ones and use them every year. I’ll be hanging them tonight.

Tags as I wrote them: Christmas, Christmas trees, holiday decorating, minor household catastrophes.