The Last Real Christmas Tree

When I was growing up, my grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, parents and siblings and I drove into the hills and tramped around in the snow and cut down Christmas trees. We would have the requisite snowball fight and I remember my grandma bringing thermoses of hot chocolate and chili. THAT was something to get nostalgic about.

Getting a tree here means driving our minivan—in the rain—to one of the many Christmas tree lots. They’re everywhere. (It is the Evergreen State after all.) We walk around—in the rain—and find a tree. We pay an enormous sum, then tie it to the roof of the van—in the rain—and then drive home.

In the rain.

After Christmas we drag the tree to the curb—in the rain—and pay the boy scouts to come and take it away.

For the past several years I’ve been campaigning for an artificial tree. A tree we can pull out of the box. No rain included. We have one faux tree already. It goes in the living room and we’ve put the real one in the family room. Why not get two artificial trees? I’ll buy scented candles! This deeply offended the romantic sensibilities of our children and Adam.

Now, I’m as sentimental as anyone. I still have ornaments I made in elementary school. (Adam tries to strategically place them on the wall side of the tree each year.) I know they’re ugly but it just wouldn’t be Christmas without the red velvet clumsily wrapped around the Styrofoam ball with rusty pins and sequins holding it all together. I already gave up my Norman Rockwell getting the Christmas tree scenario though. Time to move on.

I campaigned pretty hard last year—we even looked around at different artificial trees. But I was unanimously outvoted.

We did the whole tie the tree to the top of the van in the rain.
About a week after we’d decorated the tree and were enjoying Christmas adorned bliss, I went to our Relief Society party and came home to an unhappy scene.

The tree had fallen over! The water in the tree stand had doused the presents. Adam had rushed the kids’ presents with the melting wrapping paper to the bathtub in our bathroom so the kids wouldn’t see them. Emma had rushed Adam’s presents to her room so he wouldn’t see them. Since there were no presents for me under the tree yet, that wasn’t an issue. (It’s no fun being the mom sometimes.)

Remember in the movie Babe, when the goose keeps saying “Christmas means carnage”? Ornaments and lights were smashed, including the glass Stitch ornament Mark got from Disneyland. He said we would have to go to Disneyland again. I thought we could probably find a replacement ornament here locally.

I felt really bad that I was gone for most of the clean up efforts. Then I remembered that I alone wanted a fake tree. With a fake tree, all of that wouldn't have happened. And then I realized that it would be me rewrapping all the gifts again anyway so I didn’t get out of much.

A few days later, we decided to try again with the tree. We figured we’d done a better job setting the tree up this time. It was more balanced. Less likely to fall. We were decorating it, recapturing the Christmas joy. Without warning, when it was almost decorated, it fell over again. Again we whisked presents away that needed to be re-wrapped (by this time it was mostly sticking them in a gift bag…who cares if it’s Christmas-y or not… stapling it shut, and writing the name on it with a black Sharpie). Again we picked up pieces of broken ornaments.

This time we moved the tree to the front porch. It was in time out for the rest of the season until the boy scouts came—in the rain—to pick it up. We huddled the refugee gifts under the living room tree and Emma left a note for Santa.

“Sorry we don’t have a tree. It fell over twice.”

He understood.

This year, we bought a fake tree. In October. No one argued.

And you’ll be happy to know. The velvet, sequin ornament I made in 5th grade fared very well.