Festivity and Tree Troubles Anticipated

I remember this commercial from last year fondly. Such pleasant Christmasy sights and sounds. Such a funny little quivering rein-dog at the end. Drew, let's get some Stella. Heyyy, advertising.

In the minds of the semi-insane, it is now justifiably Christmastime. I agree with the lights on the trees—they can go up as soon as the leaves are gone, in my opinion, so they can start saving us from winter despair—and decorated storefronts are acceptable, considering consumerism and all that. (They were not acceptable at Halloween.) 

But my family will never have a Christmas tree before the 22nd or so. We make up for it by leaving the tree up forever once it's there, because lights are nice, and who wants to put the ornaments away? Emma and I did it differently. Knowing we would be gone from Ann Arbor at the crucial Christmas-tree time, we got them the first week of December or so, to make the most of the purchase and prolong the holiday joy. We then suffered as a result of those ten- or fifteen-dollar Scotch Pines for the rest of the year. There were always more needles to be vacuumed.

This is one of my favorite Christmas photos. Taken at the Weihnachtsparty ( = Christmas party) senior year.

Those Scotch Pines at Home Depot were the cheapest trees we could find. We wanted smallish trees, because full-sized trees awaited us (or at least me—Emma and her mom like cute, manageable trees) at home. My current apartment requires something much smaller, though, and I think that means I have to buy a living tree. The best way to get a tiny evergreen is one in a pot, for a lot more than fifteen dollars, but I don't want a fir tree of my own, to plant where afterward? We have too many trees in my parents' backyard as it is. So I might get a houseplant sort of tree and hang lights on it. Maybe a Norfolk Pine. My dad brought one of those home for Christmas one year, along with a traditional Douglas Fir. The Norfolk came with extremely lightweight, somewhat tacky, little gold-colored ornaments that attached with golden pipecleaners, which we saved to use every Christmas until the tree got too big for our house and he donated it to city hall. I hadn't thought about my small array of ornaments being too heavy for a non-traditional Christmas tree. I want to use them. Maybe I'll have to take Emma's advice and get a silly little, totally fake, white or silver tree.