Beginning to Look a Lot Like Football

The screaming. It frightens the dog, all the screaming we do over football. And the squirrels and the birds. Once a red-tailed hawk flew over our house during a USC-UCLA game. It never came back.

And now there are only four more days till the Super Bowl, the biggest scream of all, the last family gathering of the long holiday season.

In many ways, the Super Bowl is the best holiday. No gifts. No cards. No dress sizes to remember. Not even any decorations. Wait a second. No decorations?

“This year, how about a tree?” I say.

“A what?” asks the boy.

“A Super Bowl tree,” I say.

“A Super Bowl tree?” asks the boy. “Never heard of a Super Bowl tree.”

We sit here watching some Super Bowl preview on TV, something glitzy and flashy, not reverent and spiritual the way Super Bowl specials ought to be.

“What kind of tree?” the boy says after a few minutes.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe we don’t need a tree.”

That’s when my wife walks through, eyeing us suspiciously, her spousal radar detecting some dumb idea in its early stages--an idea that needs to be shot down early, before it can get too far. Apparently, that’s what spousal radar is for: knocking dumb ideas right out of the sky.

“I guess we’re not getting a tree this year,” I tell her.

“Huh?”

“A Super Bowl tree,” the boy says. “Dad doesn’t want to get a Super Bowl tree.”

“I want a Super Bowl tree,” the little girl says.

“Me too,” says the boy.

Sure, it’s a little crazy, this Super Bowl tree. But as fathers, we need to think outside the box. To be innovative. To take risks. It’s what dads have to do these days to stay vital. Otherwise those ambitious and free-thinking mothers will take over the world. And then what kind of world would you have.

“It wouldn’t have to be a big tree,” I say.

“There’s that junky little tree in the garage,” the boy says excitedly.

“You’re not really putting up a tree,” my wife says, her eyes narrowing, her head tilting kind of pretty, the way it does when the radar goes off.

“Just a small tree would do,” I say. “It’s the spirit that counts.”

“It’s not exactly a holiday,” my wife says.

“Yeah, Dad, the Super Bowl is not a holiday,” my lovely and patient older daughter says.

I look at the boy. The boy looks at me.

“I’ll go get the tree,” the boy says.

So we get the tree and set it in the middle of the table, which I guess is what you do with a Super Bowl tree.

It’s a ragged tree of tissue paper and cardboard, made probably in the late ‘80s, in some sticky preschool by some sticky kid, one of those Christmas items that doesn’t even get put out anymore, it’s so past its prime.

“What a beautiful tree,” the little red-haired girl says.

“You really think so?” I say.

“How should we decorate it?,” the boy asks.

“Hunks of cheese would be nice,” I say.

“How about those little sausages?” the boy says.

“That’s it, I’m leaving,” my wife says.

“Me too,” my older daughter says.

I guess this is what a major holiday does to families. It tears them apart, little by little.

“What’s wrong with her?” the boy says as he admires the little tree, which is hardly bigger than a football.

“I guess she doesn’t see the magic,” I say.

“What magic?” the little girl says, surprised that there could be magic in such a place.

“The magic of the Super Bowl,” I say.

And I tell her about the Ghosts of Super Bowls Past, about Max McGee and Joe Namath, about Jim Plunkett and Doug Williams.

I tell her how the Super Bowl can be a big bore, but it can also be amazing and full of drama.

Like when Jim O’Brien kicks a winning field goal with five seconds left. Or John Riggins runs 40 yards for a touchdown on fourth and one, the kind of stuff that lives on in the male brain forever.

“Tell her about Lombardi,” the boy says.

So I tell her the story of the first Super Bowl, held right here in her hometown, and how Vince Lombardi brought in his gutty little team from Wisconsin, the Green Bay Packing Company, to whip the Chiefs of Kansas City.

“I think they named a trophy after him,” I say.

“Yeah, Dad, they did,” the boy says.

“I thought so,” I say.

I tell them how I’ve seen every Super Bowl ever since, all 32 of them. Some I’ve regretted. Some I’ve enjoyed. Because you never know when the magic might happen.

And I tell them about the Ghosts of Super Bowl Future, how someday--long after I’m gone--the boy and the little girl will turn on the TV to find that it’s suddenly the 100th Super Bowl.

It’ll be the year 2067, and like always, they’ll invite family and friends over to watch this centennial game, to laugh and scream their heads off on this historic day, a Sunday when the magic can happen at any moment.

“Come on in,” they’ll say when their guests arrive at the front door. “We were just putting up the tree.”

Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.