Can't you just about smell the beautiful evergreen pictured above? The heavy, fragrant aroma of a newly chopped tree used to be my favorite thing about Christmas season in our house. We always bundled up the boys & headed out to a local tree farm to search long & seriously through the "forest" of beautifully perfect trees. Our sons would listen to mommy & daddy argue lightly about which tree was the best shape & height. Which one would have the high honor of holding the tons of ornaments we had collected, along with the cute & creative ones that our boys had made for us over the years. (Truly amazing what all can be done with paper & glue!)If you are able to catch the aroma of the tree above then you are inhaling a mixture of metal, paper/fabric, glue & possibly some paint. Unfortunately when the tree farms started charging over $30 for a skinny tree we gave in (read: I gave in) & purchased a .....horrors....FAKE tree! It still hurts to admit it & to hear myself ask hubby to "please get the tree box down for me, ok?".
So that wonderful holiday-filled tree perfume is absent from my house now unless I get it in candle form or some kind of spray in a can, which I will never do! Tomorrow evening I will open the box & sort out the graduated sized branches & ASSEMBLE my Christmas tree. It just feels so wrong, but it looks pretty nice once the ornaments are on and the pretty lights are sparkling away. And it is definitely way less messy. There are no dry needles on the floor around it every morning & I don't have to remember to put water in the holder every day. We don't have to worry about the possibility of water damage to the floor underneath it. The financial side of buying a fake tree is a major plus in the equation!
But I still miss the hunt for the perfect tree & the complimentary hot cocoa they served at the tree farm. The families all bundled up even though it is California & we really have no idea what true winter weather is! I loved the Christmas carols coming over the loudspeakers & the free sleigh rides around the farm. I'm sitting here thinking that maybe someday when I have some grandkids, we'll have to go wander around a tree farm, drink some cocoa & go on a sleigh ride. Maybe I will even splurge & buy myself a real tree!
Oh how wonderful, the mental images of going for a real tree. I keep thinking I'll go buy the real tree and put it on the porch. I can't do the real one inside, I love the smell, but my lungs don't. I still have a tree to assemble---sounds so funny.
ReplyDeleteWe had a fake tree the entire time when I was growing up because my brother had some kind of allergies (or that is what they told us) so I never missed having a real tree. Personally, I find the smell of the real trees inside to be too intense...and I just feel bad about chopping down perfectly fine trees to dress them up and then throw them out. I think it is so sad-looking when you see discarded Christmas trees by the trash cans after Christmas. So I am totally for fake trees but I realize you are really missing the experience of finding the tree rather than the tree itself in most ways.
ReplyDeleteI love this post!!
ReplyDeleteYou remind me of my sister-in-law, Sarah. She was very, very angry two Decembers ago when her parents gave in and purchased a fake tree. They had just moved to Southern California and it was 90 degrees in December! (Yuck!) Now when we visit around Thanksgiving we all "get ready" and go out to the garage in search for the "perfect tree." We tease her endlessly by saying, "Oh look Sarah! We didn't even have to leave the house! The perfect tree is right here!"
She hates us right about then.
But we all act jolly and put on our bathing suits and Christmas music and then deck the halls.
Happy decorating!