Out-Charlie-ing Charlie

Inspired by Kris’ Charlie Brown Christmas tree post, I thought I’d tell the sad, sad, story of Christmas 2004.

I come from a family of fake-treers. Until my mom and Dave got married, I had never had a real tree experience. I’ll admit that the smell alone makes the real tree worth all the trouble, but I still enjoy the look and ease of our old (and I mean old!) fake tree, colour coded branches and all.

And then when Dan and I started dating, the choice was obvious…I did not own my own fake tree, and Dan had always had a real one, so we took on his tradition. Going to the lot and picking out a tree was awesome. You weren’t stuck with the same sized and shaped tree year after year like I was used to. I believe we chose a glorious short, fat one to celebrate our first Christmas together in our first house.

The following year we were hosting my family for the first time and decided to go with a real tree again. It only made sense. We bought it a few weeks before Christmas and lovingly watered and took care of it so that it would still be healthy and beautiful for when the relatives arrived and Santa came down the chimney.

Unfortunately, even though Dan had always had a real tree, he never knew that you have to chop off the end before putting it in the water or there would be no way for the water to be absorbed (this must have been done automatically for him in years previous without him realizing). I’d like to take some of the blame, but quite frankly, I couldn’t have known. My tree never needed any real TLC, and that was the beauty of it.

Our beautiful tree became the Christmas joke that year.

Every hour or so, from anywhere in the house you would hear a ‘whoosh’ of needles hitting the ground…and then of course the roar of laughter as everyone started to realize what the sound was. Some of the green actually made it to Christmas Day, but almost all the needles had bit the dust by the 27th.

The scene looked like something out of a horror movie as I came down the stairs that morning…

Needless to say, we bought a fake tree during an after Christmas sale that year and haven’t gone real since. I think the cats are a little annoyed, but at least my tree stays green and full of life for as long as I leave it up and decorated. No more whooshes.