Are you too hassled to handle the holidays? Are you working overtime at the office, logging long hours on the old laptop, growing calluses from holding your cell phone, burning out your Palm Pilot?
Well, for a reasonable fee, there are people who will take a big part of the work out of the season. They’ll get your Christmas tree, put it up and completely decorate it for you.
I swear I am not making this up; I read about it in the papers.
For several years, there have been people who will do your Christmas shopping for you, so I guess this was the next logical step.
In another year or two you’ll probably be able to hire somebody to pick out and buy the presents, wrap them, decorate your tree, decorate your house, choose and address and send your Christmas cards, tuck the kids into bed and read them “The Night Before Christmas” on Christmas Eve and pass out the presents on Christmas morning.
You’ll be able to let the whole season go by without ever lifting your nose out of your spreadsheets.
This is the modern way, folks: Knock yourself out to make enough money to pay somebody else to do the things you could enjoy doing yourself if you weren’t so busy knocking yourself out to make enough money to pay somebody else to do them.
Yup, it’s the modern way.
There’s another phrase for it: It’s nuts.
I mean, kind readers, putting up and decorating the tree is THE WHOLE POINT. It’s the fun part of the process.
I’ve been participating in the putting up and decorating of Christmas trees, man and boy, for more than half a century. During those decades certain hallowed traditions have been passed down through my family from generation to generation.
First, the tree must be real. Artificial Christmas trees are to real Christmas trees as karaoke is to the Metropolitan Opera.
Second, the tree must be as big as possible.
Every year, my father would struggle for hours to get our enormous tree into its stand – not one of those modern high-tech tilt-proof self-adjusting marvels, mind you, but the old-fashioned flimsy, tippy kind where the tree was held in place (in theory) by three skinny bolts.
After the ordeal, wiping the sweat from his brow, he’d announce: “That’s it – next year we’re getting one of those little table-top trees. About two feet high.”
“Um-hum,” my mother would say. She knew better.
Third, the tree must be turned to show its “best side.” In my family this requires the senior male member of the tree-erecting team to lie face-down on the floor, grasping the tree stand and rotating it, while the senior female member of the team observes and directs the turning process.
(NOTE: It is essential that the tree stand be filled with water BEFORE the turning begins; otherwise, the appropriate amount of water will not be spilled on the carpet.)
Normally, the tree goes through seven or eight revolutions before everyone concludes it doesn’t HAVE any “best side” and leaves it in the original position.
Fourth, the angel must go on top of the tree LAST, after all the lights and ornaments. This enables the person placing the angel (traditionally a male) to lean over the decorated tree, teetering like one of the Flying Wallendas on a step ladder, kitchen chair or shaky stool and sending ornaments crashing to the floor in a steady shower of shattering glass.
Inevitably, the top of the tree is deformed, and some minor “adjustments” with pruning shears are required to make the angel stand on it securely.
One memorable Christmas season, while flailing around with the pruning shears, I inadvertently sliced through one of the light strings, causing a shower of sparks, popping a circuit breaker and plunging half the house into darkness.
“DADDY KILLED CHRISTMAS!” our daughter wailed disconsolately. (Our daughter was 24 years old at the time, but that’s a long story.)
Fifth, when the tree is standing in full Christmassy splendor, with the trunk listing 40 degrees to port, the angel listing 49 degrees to starboard, a gallon of water soaking the carpet and half the lights not functioning because of reckless pruning behavior, the entire team must pour a cup of eggnog, stand around the tree and solemnly proclaim: “It’s the best tree ever.”
Here’s hoping your tree, and your Christmas, is the best one ever.
