The Saga Of The Tree

Ok, so the post below is the story of how our Christmas tree came into being. Or at least how it became ours. Well, normally the story is the same from there for all...the tree comes home, gets decorated and shines bright with Christmas spirit. Not so much with ours.

I should first explain the way that the trees from this particular tree farm are expected to stand. The workers drill a massive hole into the bottom of the stump and then the tree is placed on a giant spike and stands up this way. It's not put into a usual tree stand with screws to hold it. Ok, so we got our giant (meaning bushy) tree home and Patrick put it on the spike and brought it into the house on the stand. We cut it open and very National Lampoon's style it poofed out and became much larger than we expected. They always look smaller when surrounded by other, larger trees. Anyway, it was up and decorated with lights and ornaments on Friday. Henry touched it once, made a face and then didn't bother it anymore which really surprised me!

Fast forward to Sunday night at 12:30, we were all sleeping when Patrick and I heard a huge, glass-shattering, bang/crash. Patrick immediately ran down the stairs and once I heard that he wasn't fighting off a burglar, I followed. Our Christmas tree had tipped OVER! And it was laying on the floor along with several broken ornaments, some lights, and lots and lots of water. We cleaned it up and put it on the porch, lights and all!

Monday night Patrick discovered that the hole drilled was crooked and the tree had probably been subtly leaning for 2 days. He decided to saw off enough of the bottom to make the stump narrow enough to fit into a normal tree stand. Well, after he sawed and stood the tree up in the stand, I was taller than it! It was less than 5 feet tall! It was so sad, but I decided to just decorate it and live with it this Christmas and realized maybe I was having too much pride in our tree. However, once it came back into the house it still wouldn't stand. It just kept tipping over. After a swift kick, Patrick took it back outside where we planted our miniature tree in a big planter we had mums in during the Fall. It also blew over once outside (yes, again), but once Patrick tied it to the porch it has been fine. We decorated it with Christmas lights and decided to put an artificial tree in our house this year. Apparently the other tree just wasn't meant to be!