This kind of discussion can go anywhere ... but on this occasion, it ended at Home Depot. A weird place to end? Sometimes, sure, but not this time. My brilliant idea was to go look for a new Christmas tree. The one we've had since our first Christmas in this house is 12 feet tall and is a major pain in the posterior to put up, light up, decorate, and take down ... as a result, there have been more years than not when we've just left it up all year. Back in May when it finally got stuffed back into its boxes and shoved back into the storage shed, we made a shaky sort of agreement that maybe this year we'd get a new one that wasn't such a hassle.
A review of a few websites showed that none of the artificial trees available this year in the usual places really grabbed us. Mark was bemoaning the lack of any truly outstanding choices, when I said (totally without thinking, as is my wont) that the only real alternative (besides not having a tree at all, which is NOT an option when you have three children) was a *real* tree. Mark's face lit up like -- well, like a Christmas tree, and he said that would be just the thing. We'd do it this year, and if it proved more of a bummer than not, we'd buy a new artificial one next year.
The children, of course, were all in favor. I haven't had a live Christmas tree since I was a wee lass, and I had only vague memories of going with Daddy to find one that was more Christmas-y than Charlie Brown-esque, so after a telephone consultation with Mom, I rang the local Coit's Root Beer place. They always had a stand at NW Expressway and Meridian, although I couldn't remember seeing it there in recent years (perhaps because I wasn't really looking for it). The nice lady that answered the phone told me they'd start selling them on Friday ... but damitol, I'm an instant-gratification American, and I wanted it TODAY! Mark popped up a search and found that Home Depot sells real trees, so I rang them and found that yes, they had some available for purchase as soon as we could get there.
We got a really nice Douglas fir, six feet seven inches tall (the guys measured it to make sure it would be okay tied to the top of the big blue Expedition on the way home). We popped in to Target and bought some new lights and a new star for the top, and here is the result ...
It smelled so delicious, and looked so lovely (even though it shed about a pound of needles between the door and its spot in the living room ... note to self: buy a new dustbuster) that I decided to bring out The Bald Santas.
The Bald Santas are So Very Special to me, it may be difficult for me to explain.
My maternal grandfather (Thomas Emmett McGee, jr. ... but forever known to his grandchildren as Ho-De-Ho) was bald, and loved Christmas. He died in February 1978. At some point, my grandmother began collecting bald Santa figures, because they made her think of Ho-De-Ho. She would get them out every Christmas, and we little darlings were admonished not to touch them lest they be irreparably harmed (and while I couldn't swear in court that we never laid a finger on any of them, I don't believe any of them ever came to an unnatural or untimely end at our hands). When I got older (notice I didn't say "grew up" ... *g*), I bought a few for her at Christmas time, but they're very difficult to find, so there weren't many. When she gave up her apartment in the senior community where she lives and moved into the assisted living wing, she couldn't take all of the stuff she'd kept with her after selling her house. I am the lucky one to have inherited The Bald Santas, because in her words, I was the only one who seemed to care about them. I've not brought them out since receiving them, because I would be the one admonishing my little angels not to touch them lest they be irreparably harmed, but tonight I felt like it would be okay. I fetched the bags from where they were stored, and began to tell my children about our Ho-De-Ho and why we have The Bald Santas. Tears began rolling down my face (as they're doing again now), and I hoped my Ho-De-Ho could see that the family tradition is being continued.
So ... Wednesday morning is work, Wednesday afternoon is shopping and a bit of preliminary cooking, Wednesday evening is a bit more work, and Wednesday night is tree decorating. We've got friends and family coming over for Thanksgiving dinner, and while we've had people over for the last couple of years for the event, for some reason this is the first time I'm really looking forward to it.
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