Last year when we hauled the duct-tape-covered box down from the attic with our ancient Christmas tree we were met by an unpleasant surprise – parts of it were missing. Major parts. You may wonder how nearly half a Christmas tree can go AWOL. You wouldn’t be the only one. We searched the attic, looked in all the other Christmas storage boxes (because, as you know, they never fit in the box they were originally sold in). Nada. So I made do and we went through the holidays with a strangely lopsided tree. On Boxing Day, I tossed it, vowing to find a great deal post-Christmas on a spiffy new tree.
Yeah, we all know how that went. Time passes. Fast forward to this year: Everyone is lounging about in a Thanksgiving dinner coma, and I’m trying to burn off that extra two (or five) pumpkin bars by hauling holiday decorations down from the attic. And. . . no tree. No problem! I’m a bit irked that I’ll need to pay full price for one, but I should be able to find a really nice tree and all will be well in the Dunbar household.
Time passes. I don’t want a pre-lit one. I don’t want a 9 foot tall one. Why doesn’t anyone have those slim-line trees? Next thing I know it’s December 14th, and we have no tree. So out I go – determined not to return home without a bit of fake greenery we can decorate and put festively wrapped presents under.
A friend suggested that I just buy a live one until I find the perfect artificial tree, but she seems to have forgotten that I can barely manage to keep my children from dying. A live tree is surely doomed. Back when the eldest was a wee babe, I used to haul home a live-live tree – the one that came with a million-pound root ball attached. We’d put it in the living room in a giant rubber feed tub and pat ourselves on the back for being green and not being one of those tree-killers. Then sometime around February, I’d manage to pick-axe a hole in the ground big enough to plant the thing, and drag it out the door and across the yard, watching in dismay as it shed brown needles in a lovely carpet along the way. It was always dead by April.
Yes, I could do the cut-tree thing, but then I’d have to deal with sticky sap and the risk that my young hooligans would knock it over and spill nasty tree water all over the floor. And then there’s the dead-needle carpet thing again. So out I went. And I found the perfect tree at Pier One.
“I want that one,