One year, he hung the Christmas star upside down. My dad.

The plastic tube you’d normally shove down over the highest bough had broken off the year before. So my dad got some heavy-duty wire and fastened our tinsel-lined star to the top of the tree. Upside down.

I’m the one who told him. Because of course I was. I was late in my college career, so I knew basically everything. About everything. Life. Politics. Religion. Morality. Satanic symbols. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to let my own dad hang the Holy Star upside down without a smug mini-lecture on occult symbology.

Mind you, this was back when The Internet was a thing for campus computer labs, not your home, and certainly not a little glass rectangle that fits in your pocket. This was before podcasts. It was before pod-anything.

So, me recognizing an inverted pentagram as something foreboding, evil, and counteractive to the reason for the season, aka the Son of God’s damn birthday…this was no small feat. Where did I even learn about that? Maybe bible camp.

If I’m being honest (I am), I didn’t really care about Satan. Or Jesus. I cared about hearing myself talk because I knew a thing. And like so many other teenage boys raised in America on a steady diet of, well, America, I instinctively knew that when you know something, you say something. Loudly. With rock-solid confidence and subtle notes of disdain for anyone too dumb to know the things you know. Especially if that “anyone” was your dad.

Here’s what I knew:

A) Three points up equals the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
B) Two points up equals, um, Devil Horns or something.

To my father, this was all-new information. He was surprised. Not mortified. Not aghast at his humiliating blunder. But he was awash in disbelief, to be sure.

BY THE TIME I WAS OLD ENOUGH TO THINK THOUGHTS LIKE, "I SHOULD TELL MY DAD HOW MUCH I APPRECIATED ALL THOSE FANTASTIC CHRISTMAS TREES," I HAD MY OWN KIDS TO WORRY ABOUT. AND THEN HE WAS GONE.

Just not awashed enough to do anything about it. In fact, he still seemed pretty proud of his work. Proud that he’d struggled for a good 20 minutes, puzzling out the problem, finding a solution, hunting down the wire, and wobbling atop an old wooden ladder to affix the star just so.

“Aren’t you gonna fix it?” I asked, lounging on a nearby sofa.

He smiled at me. He coughed out an awkward laugh. He looked down at his feet and sighed. He turned and walked out of the room.

No. He was not gonna fix it. He didn’t even seem to care.

Even after I’d informed my mom and my sister that we’d be placing our gifts beneath Beelzebub’s Pine Tree this year, even then he didn’t seem to care. He just sat down and read the paper. Probably drank some eggnog. Watched a football game. I don’t think he gave Lucifer a second thought.

Me? I also played it cool. I had already unveiled my vast well of amazing knowledge, so my work was pretty much done. I spent the rest of the evening decorating the large, fresh-cut Demon Tree standing in the corner of our living room. Hanging up wonky, handmade ornaments and shiny red and gold balls. My sister and I teased each other. We shut off all the lamps and we quietly ogled the multicolored string lights glowing through the shadowy pine needles.

And at some forgotten point deep in the starry winter night, I stopped thinking about Satan altogether.

If Satan were real, I bet he’d think the whole thing was delightfully amusing. If my dad were still alive, I hope he’d agree. By the time I was old enough to think thoughts like, “I should tell my dad how much I appreciated all those fantastic Christmas trees,” I had my own kids to worry about. And then he was gone.

But now I think about him. Hanging up that star. Making sure we had some holiday light filling up the house and the whole cold month of December.