Bringing Home the Tree
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Family on Monday, December 15, 2008 5:36 PM
This past Saturday we packed up Camilla and approximately seven pounds of toddler outerwear and drove half an hour to get a Christmas tree.
In previous years we’ve bought our tree at the local big-box home-improvement store, which has yielded surprisingly good trees. It’s also incredibly easy.
However, I have wonderful childhood memories of bundling up and going to the Christmas tree farm and trooping around in the snow until we found our perfect tree. Singing carols in the car, having homemade hot cocoa when we got home… it was a vital part of the Christmas ritual! Bryan grew up with artificial trees and although he likes having real ones now, he doesn’t particularly care about the tree-getting method. But I was insistent. We *must* give our children the same wonderful experience!
Here is what I never realized about that wonderful experience: it is a heck of a lot of work for the parents.
For me as a kid, Christmas Tree Day consisted of:
1) Go to tree farm
2) Pick out tree
3) Bring tree home
4) Drink cocoa
5) Have fun decorating!
Christmas Tree Day for my parents, on the other hand, comprised dozens of tasks, including:
1) Collect hats, scarves, mittens, coats, snow pants, boots for everyone involved
...
5) Hope no one gets sick in the car
...
9) Respond patiently to children complaining about coldness, wetness, tired legs, etc.
...
14) Manage to locate and cut down a suitable tree
...
17) Respond patiently to children complaining about length of car ride, hunger, need for bathroom, etc.
...
23) Respond patiently to children complaining about amount of time it takes to make cocoa
...
28) Clean up inevitable mess from cocoa-drinking
...
31) Somehow manage to bring tree into house and set it up, despite “help” from small people
...
36) Respond patiently to ornament casualties
...
42) Make sure some ornaments actually get hung on the tree, again despite “help” from small people
...
49) Respond patiently to meltdowns of children exhausted by long, exciting day
...
53) Collapse into bed, grateful that it’s only necessary to get one Christmas tree per year!
Since we have only one child, our tree-getting day actually went a lot more smoothly than that. But I have retroactive sympathy and a huge amount of respect for my parents for going through it every Christmas, and respect for every one of you who does the same thing. I wouldn’t blame you for a minute if you decided to get your tree at the big-box home-improvement store instead.
We might be going there ourselves next year.
Print Blog
Email a FriendPost a Comment
By submitting this form, you give Faith And Family Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
