The Perfect Tree

The tree is up!

The wife and I have a tradition of sorts. On "Tree day" we pick up some tasty seasonal snacks (nogg and what not), dress up generally festively, put the Christmas tunes on in the car and head to the tree lot. Every year it is the same, we pick a tree in under 15 min. (many years we just buy the first one we lay hands on - what's the big deal?) We con someone into taking our photo, we pay, we lug that sucker home.

I saw the bottom off the tree in the yard, jam it in the stand and drag it into the living room. I run the electrical cord up the trunk (the one with plugs all along it) and the wife takes it from there.

Its not that I don't enjoy decorating the tree - I love it. But what I love is the decorating - I don't concern myself too much with the finished product. In my bachelor years, my roommates and I would load up on the nogg, blare the Christmas tunes and try to finish the tree before we were finished ourselves - singing the whole way through. One December morning we roused to find a beautifully decorated tree with a fistful of tinsel just globbed in the middle - apparently the last man standing hucked it at the tree from across the room before calling it a night. When I admire a tree I have decorated, I don't necessarily look at it and say, "That's beautiful", I usually look at it and say, "Man, that was fun".

The wife wants it to be fun and beautiful. I don't have as much patience for beautiful as the wife does.

So the wife decorates the tree while I haul the boxes and cook the meal and generally try to stay out of the way. And darn it all if it isn't the most beautifullest tree I have ever seen - every year.

Our first year of marriage, we had a Christmas budget of exactly $75. The wife took 32.50 and I took the other half. We split up at the mall. All the gifts fit in our stockings. Amongst a handful (literally) of other items, the wife gave me an ornament. And a tradition was born.

For the past 17 Christmases we have given each other 33 ornaments - last year we gave Annie her first three. It is getting to the point that every single ornament on our tree is imbued with the meanings of the years. When the day comes for Annie to trim her own tree in some apartment somewhere, she will have her own set of 40-some-odd ornaments to get her started.

Where was I going with this? . . . . oh, yeah, This got me started. Then this and then This

Merry Christmas.