Hut, two, three, four...or the choosing of the annual Christmas tree

One of my other favorite holiday traditions!  We headed out to the local tree farm for the fourth year to choose our tree.  This is our second year in this house, so I really don't have a good explanation for how we misjudged the height of the tree we needed by so much.  We thought well, we have 10 foot ceilings, so we'll take a 10 foot tree and just have them trim six inches off the base and we'll be set.  Right.  I believe Joe had to take the tree back out to the garage at least two and maybe three times to trim it some more.  Once we got it in the stand we thought we had it just right until we realized we forgot to leave room for the star.  So note to self for next year---an eight foot tree will do just fine.

Families always have funny recurring disagreements on some mundane topic.  Ours is about when it is time to get the tree.  I am an advocate that the right time is the Saturday after Christmas.  Joe believes it is two weeks before the big day, or some years the Saturday before Christmas.  Growing up, my mom always loved to decorate a live tree and arranged the lights so that the tree looked like it was lit from within.  (Her tip is to poke the lights way in by the base instead of just stringing them on the outside branches.). My sister and I would turn out the lights in the house but leave the tree lights on and sleep on the couches next to the tree watching it glow as we fell asleep.

Joe's family waits much longer.  His birthday is in mid-December, and his mom used to wait until after his birthday to get ready for Christmas so that he wouldn't feel shorted on the birthday celebration.  That and Joe is pretty convinced a live Christmas tree only has a 10 day shelf life before it becomes a Major Fire Hazard.

So this year I let Joe pick the date and we went two weeks prior to Christmas...only to find there were very, very few trees left to cut down.  We walked over an acre of stumps in fact, passing only three or four stragglers that were left for obvious reasons.   A huge bald spot on one, an odd, deep ring of brown needles on another.  We asked two guys who worked there for tips on where to go to find a good tree, and they sheepishly and politely said, "well, you really gotta come the Saturday after Thanksgiving to get a good one..."  It was as if I had written the script and paid them a tip to say it.  But so much more convincing when it comes from The Tree Guys than your spouse.

So we were pretty dejected and about to leave for a pre-cut tree when the kids found this one at the back of the lot.  A bald patch on one side and some brown needles, but I thought maybe we could make it work.  Joe was skeptical, but the kids were so excited and quickly started marching in a circle around it chanting "hut, two, three, four!" Trying to guard their tree from the two or three other straggler families out there with us.  We lugged it home, trimmed off the brown, hid the bald patch behind a chair and all thought it turned out better than we had hoped. Oh, and I poked the lights way in toward the base, just like mom taught me.  Because part of holidays are traditions, right?