A Jen Too Many

I spent tonight teaching my daughters the fine art of artificial tree branch fluffing.

When I was a kid, we always had a real tree. One year it was a live tree, in a wooden barrel half. I think my parents were being ecologically correct that year. (The tree went outside after Christmas was over. I don't remember what happened to it after that, although I would be willing to lay money on it having died of neglect eventually. Green thumbs do not run in my family. Herbicidal thumbs do.) A couple of times we went out to tree farms and cut them down ourselves. Most years we just went to a tree lot.

Dad would always get the biggest tree that would fit in our house. The house we lived in when I was in high school had cathedral ceilings, and he really went all out after that, at least as far as height went. You see, a 10 or 12 foot tree is not cheap - unless you are going for the very tall Charlie Brown tree. Especially when you are buying it on Christmas Eve just before the lot closes for the year. I wish I had a picture of some of those trees. Not much in the way of branches, but they were certainly tall!

I was a Christmas tree purist when I was young. Artificial trees? Blasphemy! Yet here I am, on my *mumblemumble* year of our artificial tree, and very happy with it. OK - there's no smell. There are also no needles that are still being vacuumed out of the carpet in March. No worry about the dog drinking the tree's water and poisoning himself with tree food / preservative. No stress about scheduling when to get a tree, and how to get it home. No having to make sure to remember to put it out at the right time to have the garbage service pick it up free of charge.

So my children will have fond Christmas memories of putting the tree together before decorating it. That's OK. We have a living pine in a pot on our porch. If I remember to transplant into a bigger pot this spring, it might not even die.