It takes two to get a Christmas tree to stand up straight
I have been doing battle with a Christmas tree for the past
week. It hasn’t been a pretty sight.
For pretty much forever, there’s been a standard in our house
about Christmas trees: We go to a nearby choose ‘n’ cut farm, pick
a tree, take the saw to it, and bring it home, lashed to the top of
the car like a prickly trophy.
It takes two to get a Christmas tree to stand up straight
I have been doing battle with a Christmas tree for the past week. It hasn’t been a pretty sight.
For pretty much forever, there’s been a standard in our house about Christmas trees: We go to a nearby choose ‘n’ cut farm, pick a tree, take the saw to it, and bring it home, lashed to the top of the car like a prickly trophy.
This used to be a lot of fun when the boys were little and wanted to help me. A few years ago, though, the experience of wielding a saw lost its charm, and I became a lone tree seeker.
I would have just bought an artificial tree at that point, except for the fact that a friend of mine owns a Christmas tree farm and is always telling me how bad artificial trees are for the environment. Real trees provide oxygen for the world and then can be chipped up after the holidays – everything gets returned to the earth.
So I keep on chopping a tree every year.
This year, I got a beautiful Monterey pine with a very nice full look to it. The tree was the perfect height and circumference, a lovely shade of green, and smelled exactly how a Christmas tree ought to smell.
There was only one problem: I couldn’t get the darn thing to stand up.
I don’t mean stand up straight. I mean stand up, at all.
Every time I put the trunk in the stand and tightened the screws, it simply fell over.
There’s nothing like a reluctant tree to put a person in the exact opposite of a cheery holiday mood.
I’ll admit it – I swore at the Christmas tree.
Of course, I’m using one of those cheap plastic stands with the long screws that I’m sure I’ve had for at least 10 years. There is nothing high-tech about it – you simply tighten the screws. It had served me well for a long time. But then I began to think maybe it was the stand’s fault.
Then I gritted my teeth and decided that I would, gosh darn it, get one more year out of the tree stand.
I finally got the tree to stay upright, after about 100 failed attempts, and breathed a sigh of relief. True, it was listing slightly to the right, but no one would know after the tree was swathed in lights and ornaments.
I waited about a day and then commenced to decorate when it seemed as though all was stable. All the old favorite ornaments went on – glitter and macaroni creations my sons had made in preschool, items given to us by family and friends over the years, the mini-Starbucks coffee cup I’d bought myself one year in recognition of my extreme caffeine habit.
The whole thing looked lovely and the lights even worked.
However, two days later, the tree fell over.
Santa must have had to cover his ears, because I was swearing again.
I called my friend, the Christmas tree guy, and said, “You sold me a defective tree.”
Of course, I was just kidding. I think.
He told me to try again, and this time, to have someone hold the tree for me while I tightened the screws.
“But I always did it by myself before!” I wailed.
He insisted that was the way to go.
So my son Ross helped me with the tree, and I had to admit that it was a lot easier that way.
The tree is still standing as I write this. I don’t entirely trust it anymore, but it seems to be behaving itself – for now, anyway.
All I want for Christmas is for my tree to stand up. At least until we get all the presents unwrapped.
Wish me luck.
