This is our first year ever to have a fake tree. There's something unsettling about its not being real. For instance, I miss the piney smell. And yet, there was neither money nor time to buy a real tree. In the middle of January last year, we found a very nice artificial tree on clearance, for less money than one real tree would cost. Thinking ahead, I bought the fake tree.
It's actually very pretty. We tend to get Charlie-Brown trees. This one is NOT our typical scraggly penny-pinching tree.
I was surprised to discover that our arms and hands were poked and scratched from the artificial tree just as much as from the real ones. But what confuses me is the sudden panic out of nowhere: "Oh no! It's been a long time since I watered the tree! I better do it right away before it sucks up all the water and goes dry!!!" And then I realize that there's no place to put water. Gary told me that I could put a bucket or dish under the tree so that I'd have a place to pour water, y'know, just to satisfy that craving.
The tree went up very early this year -- the evening of the 12th. For quite a few years we've been setting up the tree around the 22nd, give or take a day. I don't know how I would've pulled off the tree set-up. So Gary took it upon himself to tackle this Christmas-decoration project. With Lessons & Carols this weekend and a very long choir practice the previous day, and with the kids here from out of town, and with Gary and the boys working every day until 5:00 on the 24th, the tree set-up had to be last weekend, or not at all. It was so nice of Gary to come up with the plan for decorating, and nice of Andrew to do so much to build and fluff the tree and then to put all the lights on.
I prefer real trees, too, but like you we have sometimes found it more practical (and cost-effective) to have an artificial one. And the artificial ones have improved so much from how I remember them when I was growing up (and didn't like them at all and vowed I would never have one--famous last words).
ReplyDeleteBut that spreadig and fluffing . . . that takes forever! Yay Andrew for doing it for you!
Because of allergies, we caved and got a fake tree a few years ago and Charley's favorite thing to do was to ask the kids if they had watered the tree. The joke is wearing off now but it was fun at the time. I NEVER thought we would have a fake tree. Ours too was on clearance a few days before Christmas. The display models were 75 percent off and I bit. No box - 50 dollar lighted tree the exact kind I wanted.
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