O Christmas Tree (Redux)

This year’s Christmas tree is up and decorated. As I’ve mentioned before, my husband and I like live trees. Actually, I’d be willing to switch to artificial, but he is not. Though he did allow that with the hardwood floors in our new home, we’ll have to be more careful not to spill water than on the carpet in our old house.

We went to buy our tree on December 14, fighting the crowds at the shopping center near Home Depot. The stores were crowded that Saturday afternoon because a snowstorm was predicted for Sunday. (The snowstorm did indeed arrive, dumping the first snow I had to shovel on this driveway.) But in the meantime, we were able to buy what was billed as a six-to-seven-foot Fraser Fir.

The nice man at Home Depot cut off the bottom of the tree and a few broken and dead branches. Then he bagged it up and helped my husband load it in our SUV.

We set up the tree in the garage for several days to let it drink up after its parched stay in the Home Depot parking lot. Then we moved it inside, discovering quickly that we should have taken it in through the front door instead of through the kitchen. A lesson for next year.

We put the tree in an untested location in our new home—the intersection of our entry hall and great room. Of course, any location would have been untested, because this house has never held a Christmas tree before. In fact, the house was only a hole in the ground last Christmas.

We have a twelve-foot ceiling in our entry and great room, yet after the tree was lopped off at Home Depot, it is shorter than my husband (it’s now less than six feet). I thought it might look a little strange to have a short tree in a tall space. But if we’d looked for a ten-foot tree, it would have been way too wide at the base to fit in the house. Where it is, we can admire it from any corner of the open living, cooking, and dining area. But we have to dodge it as we turn the corner to go down the stairs.

The tree is crooked, but we’ve frequently ended up with crooked trees. My husband says that’s part of the charm of a live tree.

We decorated it with the Hallmark Keepsakes ornaments I’ve collected over the years, plus other old favorites. And now I’m feeding it twice a day—it is still drinking water like it just ran a marathon.

Oh, well. It won’t be up long. We’ll take it down before New Year’s.

I wonder if this Christmas tree placement has established a new tradition for our house, or if we will try putting next year’s tree somewhere else. Or if I’ll be able to persuade my husband to buy a fake tree. At least the fake ones are straight.

How did your Christmas tree look this year?