Only 95 days to go!

It’s been a crazy summer here at Woodhaven, at least weather-wise. Hardly any rain, lots of sun, a streak of record-breaking temps over 100 degrees, and a tomato crop reminiscent of summers in California where our kitchen counters would become a sea of red in varying degrees of roundness. And so naturally, still wearing shorts and sunscreen, we deemed last Sunday a good day to buy a Christmas tree.

From about age five onward, I grew up with a fake Christmas tree. It was that whole energy crisis thing in the early ‘70s. And so every year after, Christmas began when the big cardboard box -- increasingly smushed from being Mayflowered all over the country -- was dragged into the living room and my parents set about assembling our synthetic tannenbaum. I had absolutely no problem with this, as the only real tree I remembered was a chunk of a manzanita bush that one Christmas in Texas when I was four. A screwing together of a metal pole, a careful hanging and unbending of awkward wire branches, a quick spritz of Pine Scent in a Can and it was Christmas! Ah, tradition.

Rob, on the other hand, is something more of a traditional traditionalist. And so for the past 19 Christmases, I have had the pleasure of a real tree, sap and pine needles and spiders and all. And it has been quite enchanting. I have thoroughly enjoyed our annual trek the last few years to the punnily fun Tree Wisemen Christmas Tree Farm to personally select and saw our 8 feet of pine scented loveliness. We even have an old sheet dedicated to wrapping our annual tree for easy transport. Ah, tradition.

But we’ve discovered a less endearing tradition which prompted a discussion last year about perhaps acquiring a fake tree. We seem to travel on or shortly after Christmas Day and therefore we have found ourselves opening presents, tossing the crumpled gift wrapping in the garage, and doing a turbo-charged undecorating of the tree so we can drag it out to the burn pile before catching a plane. Last year, as Rob was doing that in about 2 feet of snow as I took pictures, it occurred to both of us that there had to be a better tradition.

And so we are now the proud owners of 9 pre-lit feet of Kirkland-branded fauxness with Just Cut™ branches and a foot controlled power switch. We were going to put it in the rafters with the rest of the Christmas foo-fah but it’s too heavy. Really heavy. Like it’s-still-in-the-SUV heavy. So we’ll probably find room for it somewhere on the garage floor and drag it in the house branch by branch come mid-December, assuming we have a plane to catch a few weeks later.