O Christmas Tree

Our family is a real tree kind of family. We love to walk into the living room and smell the pine scent. We love that our tree is different every year. We love making a yearly ornament out of a slice of the trunk. Oh, and of course the challenge of keeping the water full and the floor clean. The convenience of an artificial tree is tempting, but we have not given in yet.

We were planning on getting our tree the first week of December, but one thing led to another and come Christmas eve, we still did not have a Christmas tree. We have friends that always get their tree on the 24th. It is their family tradition to go get their tree and decorate it after dinner on Christmas eve. I myself an more of a planner. Decorating a tree is a messy undertaking. But as the month passed by and our living room was still void of a tree, I realized that most of the tree lots were also void of trees. And then I realized that we would be putting our gifts under a house plant if we didn't take action.

It so happened that the Zookeeper was working a 24 hour shift on Christmas eve. I had called around to several stores and guess what, they were all out of trees too. There is a landscaper that grows trees not to far from us, so I gave him a call. He said, "You need a tree today? Well I stopped selling trees a few days ago, but you are welcome to anything out in the pile". Usually this pile is clippings and dead trees from his jobs that he burns every few months. So I thought to myself, maybe we can get some branches and try to shape them into a tree, anything would be better than my sickly pothos plant.

So the kids and I loaded into the truck for the 1/4 mile trip. It was of course, snowing by this time. We pulled up to "the pile" and under the snow there were several Christmas trees still wrapped in twine! I tugged on the first one I could uncover and dragged it away from the pile. Digging Badger helped me get it into the back of the truck. We drove the short trip home and backed into the driveway.

The fairy tale tree story takes a short break here. . .

We somehow managed to get the water-logged tree onto the porch. I was covered in snow and very heavy. I got the tree stand out and tried putting it on, but the trunk was just as big as the opening of the stand. The boys helped me hold it and turn it enough that we got it crammed into the stand, but then it started to lean, so I tightened it some more, and then it leaned some more and the boys thought they were going to be killed on Christmas eve by a huge Christmas tree that refused to stand up.

We'll just do it the old fashioned way. I don't need to water it anyway. So out to the shop I went to find some scrap wood and a few screws. I grabbed the power drill too, because after turning the rusty screws in the tree stand back and forth, my hands were aching. Half way back to the house I dropped one of the screws, a black screw, onto the white, snow-covered driveway. I looked for the screw for ever, but it could not be found. I'm sure one of our tires will find it. Back to the shop to get another screw. I'll just grab a few extra this time. So, I get back to the house, which has it's door wide open, because there is a monster of a tree hanging out of it, while it is literally freezing outside and the heater is blasting, but I don't care because I am sweating after trying to get this tree up. I screwed the first piece of wood into the bottom of the trunk. That was easy! I get the other cross piece started and guess what? The battery goes dead. So back out to the shop I go to switch out batteries. By the way, it is still snowing. So now the cross piece is on and the boys help me stand the tree up. . . until it hits the ceiling. All I can think of is Chevy Chase and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I got the loppers and cut the top 16 inches off that tree. That was easy! We got it to stand up without tipping over and it is now 1/2 an inch from the ceiling. Still room for a star!

I cut the twine expecting there to be a big poof of branches opening up, glad to be unbound. There was no poof. There was no being unbound. There was just a stiff, frozen, skinny tree.

I started to pull the branches down like you would an artificial tree coming out of storage. I thought this is great, I get the smell of a real tree and the fun of fluffing a fake tree.

Notice the frosty color on the branches. That is not camera effects people, that is the real deal.

As I am fluffing up our tree, I begin to wonder how safe it is to put lights onto a tree that is dripping melting snow into a puddle on the floor. I put a few towels around it and decided to take a lunch break.

Back to our previous fairy tale. . .

We plugged in the lights that were all untangled and all worked. We trimmed our tree with Christmas music playing in the background. The kids each put on their ornaments from years past. And they all went to bed with visions of sugar plums in their heads.

And on Christmas morning when the Zookeeper walked in the door, he saw only the love that went into putting our tree up.