Christmas Trees, 2021

          The Christmas season is kicked off.  I’ve always liked Christmas immensely, and I taught our daughter to love it as well.  I get to take all the credit here since my better half belongs to the ‘Bah, Humbug’ school of thought who interprets Christmas as celebrating a ridiculous religious tradition sprinkled with crass commercialism.  Oh, yes, he’s a real Ho, Ho, Ho killer when he gets on a BH rant.

         Our first brush this year with the 'Bah, Humbug' attitude came with our Christmas tree.  We have a flower seller whose booth is outside the local convenience store at the end of our block.  We buy flowers from him sporadically all year long.  In fact, he made up the most beautiful bouquet of flowers I’ve ever gotten for my birthday.  Anyway, back to the point…. The flower guy put out for sale a selection of Christmas trees ranging from three feet high to about six feet tall. 

I’ve said for the past month our grandson (AKA the Huckleberry) is going to have a tree at our house which is just his height, and that he can decorate with the unbreakable bedazzled felt ornaments I made.  This is a tradition which we started with our daughter.  Her first tree was three feet tall, and she could reach every branch including the top.  Tiny trees may seem small to us adults, but to a toddler, they are huge!  Each year, as she grew, the tree got taller. 

When you don't have a car you either have to pay a delivery fee or carry the tree home yourself.  It seemed a no-brainer to me to buy the tiny tree at the end of the block.  It's an easy carry home.  It even has a small sized tree stand.  All was fine.  The Huckleberry and his Grandad picked one out since they pass the trees on the walk home from school each day.  

On purchase day, they  discovered  the price was $50.  Bah, Humbug, they walked away without the tree.  I was furious.  This will be the only Christmas I will have to spend the entire season with a grandchild, and it’s not like we can’t afford the tree.  The upshot:  We have a three foot tall $50 tree in our living room decorated by The Huckleberry.  It’s a cute as a bug, and worth every penny.  He loves this tree and wants it lit the minute he arrives at our house from school. 

         Christmas Tree Saga Number Two:  Our family tradition is to buy and decorate our Christmas Tree immediately after Thanksgiving.  Our son-in-law has learned to give the Sweetpea (our daughter's nickname) free rein in trees since she and I love the decoration aspect of Christmas and the tree is the centerpiece.  My mother wrote the ‘family’ and my closest friends when she was barely one year old suggesting giving her a Christmas ornament each year.  Due to her efforts, the Sweetpea has a huge collection of fun ornaments.  The Piano Man (son-in-law's nickname) now has his collection given to him by me which we started in 2009, and The Huckleberry has his.  At this point, there are so many a six to seven foot tree will not display all the ornaments.

         This year the Sweetpea decided to go BIG.  They bought a nine foot tree!  Now, if you have the Texas mini-mansion or a sprawling ranch style home, it’s not that big a deal.  The only restriction is ceiling height.  Well, there's an 11 foot ceiling in their 1000 square foot Brooklyn apartment so, no problem!  Remember the $50 three foot tree?  Well, they paid $95 for the monstrosity they purchased.  (Our Bah Humbugger somehow thought this validated his point the three footer was too expensive.)  Gargantua is a beautiful, beautiful tree.  Its shape is perfect and the branches thick.  It does require a heavy duty stand.  To give you a further scope of the size, it took nine strands of lights.  Best of all, for the first time in a long time, ALL the ornaments are hung, and they aren’t even sparse.  Gigantico only takes up 25% of their living room space.  The Sweetpea and I think that’s perfectly reasonable.  It looks wonderful.  Let the Christmas festivities begin!