Sappy Christmas

I have always been a die-hard sentimentalist at Christmas time. This sentimental nature must have skipped a generation in my family, because my mom doesn't have a sappy bone in her body.

Every year for forever, my Great Grandma Clark, who lives in Florida, sent us each a package of handmade Christmas ornaments--you know, the ones made out of yarn that ye grandmas of old used to make. These are the ornaments of my Childhood Christmases, those and the ones we made in school. You all have them, too. The most famous one in our family is a picture of my sister in preschool in a popsicle stick frame wearing mismatching clothes from the lost and found (because she wet her pants that day) with her belly sticking out. There may have been glitter involved.

Usually my mom puts up two trees, one carefully decorated with all matching gold and off-white ornaments, and one as a catchall for the traditional Grandma Clark and popsicle stick ornaments. For a long time, the latter was a real one, cut down from a farm we go to every year after thanksgiving. Guess which tree I always liked better?

I've also always been pretty die-hard about the whole real tree thing, insisting beyond all reason that we spend $40 and up each year on a tree that smells like real pine, sheds real pine needles, and leaves our hands sticky and poked after decorating it. After all, that is what you're supposed to do for Christmas.

I was aghast when I went home this year to find that my Momela, the Hard Hearted, had replaced the Family Tree with yet another sterile, fake, matchy matchy poo poo tree. Where's the tinsel we've been reusing since 1986? Where's the little Santas made of yarn? Where's Carrie in her lost and found clothes!?

Luckily my boys have a good mom who cares about such fundamental moral values such as cutting down real trees each year and putting up ugly Christmas decorations.

... on the other hand...

Our tree, though very cute if I do say so myself, irritated the Christmas out of me this year. We bought it from a lot in the city at like 4:30, which is now as dark as midnight (stupid non daylight savings time! Why don't we just always stay in daylight savings time!!??), so we could not see that the inner and lower branches were already very dry. I seriously think they cut our tree down months before we bought it.

When we got back from Minnesota, I vacuumed every stinking pine needle up from the tree skirt and surrounding carpet, only to find that two hours later it literally looked like I hadn't done a thing. I also think the tree was home to THREE nasty spiders--the white kind that blend in with their surroundings, EWW!--which caused a minor freak out in front of my brother in law. (Imagine my voice unnaturally high, "Zach!That'sANOTHERspider!That'sthethirdoneintwodays!andthey're allthosenastywhiteonesandthisoneisinourBEDROOM!andI'mnotgoingtobe abletosleepinhere!andyoubettergetitbecausewhatifIseeonetomorrowwhen I'mhomealonewithIsaac?didyoureallygetitorareyoujustfakingittomakemefeel better?youbetterhavereallygottenit!doyoupromise?promise?)

A few days later, I was sitting on the couch near the tree and I could hear needles falling from its brittle branches. I decided it was time to take it down even though we had really only "enjoyed" it for one week. After removing all the decorations and lights, this is what it looked like:

By the time I got it to the dumpster, it literally had NO needles left on it. Not a single one.

I'm beginning to consider leaving sappiness, sentimentalism and needles behind and buying a "tree" in a box.