X-Mas Tree!
Sunday, December 17th, 2006Mrs. Smithers and I attended a holiday dinner party last Saturday evening and at one point the topic turned to X-Mas trees.
A friend of mine regaled me with the tale of his procurement of the family tree this year. He took the crew out to a tree farm and cut the tree down himself. It was the coldest day of the year thus far so the family waited for him in the car while he set about separating the tree from the earth. It sounded like an satisfying experience for him. I suppose if you need to have a real tree in the house cutting a tree yourself is the way to go. It’s a lot better than picking up a tree from one of those tree sale lots where the trees have been cut down since late August and spray painted green. But if I lived for one million years you would not catch me doing anything like that. Cutting down a tree is hard work in the summer. Just because it’s happy holiday time does not make it less work. Mrs. Smithers has to plead with me to mow the grass in the summer. You won’t see me out there busting my ass in the cold doing any agricultural work.
Besides, I am not too stoked on bringing something into my house that can kill us all in less than a minute. Roll video:
When you are naturally lazy things like keeping the tree stand full of water tends to be neglected and forgotten. So having a dried out piece of timber in the middle of my house covered with electrical cords just does not sound like a great idea. Add that to the constant falling of needles onto the floor, the dog wanting to chew on the branches, the utter mess in set up and breakdown and it all adds up to one big pain in the keester that I sure don’t need. Especially at holiday time when all I want to do is eat and open cool presents.
So we have a fake tree! We store it in box in the basement during the “off season” but we are ready to break it out if some “summer time holiday with a tree” tradition gets started. It’s plastic and made up of three pieces that all slide together. Plus it had pre-wired lights that are all arranged perfectly so it looks fantastic each and every year. Goes up easy, comes down easy. No problems. Plus it’s rock solid so it’s going to last us for 50 years. That’s over $2000 of money saved by not buying a “real” tree every year. $2000 worth of additional presents for me and Baby Smithers as opposed to $2000 worth of fire hazard/compost material. Maybe you real tree types could decorate your tree with dollar bills and then take it out in the front yard and set the whole thing on fire for News Years! That sounds like a pretty cool tradition but not cool enough for me to consider a real tree.
If you want to have a real tree in the house then please be my guest, it’s all about enjoying the happy holiday time. Just keep it moist and keep it away from any open flames. Good luck to you.
