O Christmas Tree

For many years now, Brian and I have secretly made fun of people with artificial Christmas trees. "Crazy!" we said. "Who in the world wouldn't want the smell of a fresh Frasier fir permeating their home? How can it be Christmas if you put your preschool-made ornaments on some plastic tree and call it a day?"

As it turns out, artificial Christmas tree owners may be on to something after all.

Last Friday, after a long week at work for me and a long, well, two days off for Brian, we decided to pick out a tree that we planned to put up over the weekend. We headed to Spanky's, our local tree place that we've been going to since I was a child. Spanky can't be more than five feet tall, but he's got these guys that work for him and have for years - they can handle a big ol' Christmas tree better than BB can handle a pallet of Pepsi.

Anyway, since we're seasoned tree-picker-outers, we headed straight for the yellow tags. Blue tags mean short and somewhat skimpy (think Charlie Brown, but with a little more oomph). Yellow tags mean around eight feet tall and fairly fat. Fat we like, when it comes to Christmas trees. White tags mean 11-12 foot trees - basically trees for people who own old homes and plant to host giant holiday cocktail parties.

So the yellow-tagged trees were all lined up in a row, and it didn't take us too long to find our big, fat, too-tall tree. We pick it out, one of Spanky's little helpers takes it down and saws off a good foot or so from the bottom. (Our ceilings are only so tall, you see.) We take it home, put it in a tub of water and let it drink until Sunday.

In short, our weekend was crazy. The Pepsi Christmas party was Saturday night (I could write a whole other blog about that one), and with everything else we had going on, we didn't get to the tree until 5:00 Sunday afternoon. I don't know about where you all live, but here, it's practically dark at 5. Plus it was raining; cold, wet drizzle and Christmas tree stands don't mix.

First we took the handsaw and sawed off some bottom branches that were in the way of the stand we had. Now granted, we have done this before, but never have we had a tree this big and this heavy. Our stand had screws that you screw into the tree trunk to hold it up, but the tree was so heavy that it just fell right over when we tried to stand it up. Brian had worked all day, I had been in church since God was a boy, and it was all we could do not to cuss this tree up one side and down the other.

All told, it took us three trips to Spanky's, two tree stands, and one kind teenager to help us get this damned tree up in our living room. And, after all of that, we discovered that those bottom branches we sawed off left a few holes...all the way around the tree. It took us til Thursday to calm down enough to decorate the thing, but now that it has rocking horses made out of pencils, candy cane picture frames and cotton ball Santas on it, it's kind of cute. Fat, bright, lopsided and dry, but it's still kind of cute.

Those fake tree owners may have it easy, but they sure don't have good stories to tell. And I'll bet you one thing: when they come home from work after a long day, I bet they don't come inside to smell the scent of a freshly-cut Frasier fir tree telling them that yes, it is Christmastime.