Oh Christmas Tree

The Tolleys had a ratty looking artificial Christmas tree to symbolize the festivities of the season, and the festivities began with putting up the tree. Now, I have nothing against artificial trees. They don't have that piney smell, but they don't rot, either. Or so you would think. Our tree was ancient. When fully erected and poofed, it never looked like the picture on the box. No matter, the picture on the box was long gone, much like the instructions for putting the tree together. There was a general plan of inserting branches into the center "trunk" of the tree, and that was pretty much it. At one time, each branch had a color painted on its end to help you put the tree together, but over the years, the paint had all flaked off. Every year we would scrutinize the branch ends like we were on an episode of CSI, yet still we had our doubts. You would think that the size of the branches would give us a clue, but our yearly rush to take down the tree and put out Easter eggs had made us squish all the branches together to fit in the decaying box until next year. Everything was a little bendy, but with an "artistic" view of trees and some squinting, our tree was passable as a tree. Now it was time for the ornaments. Remember the scene in Charlie Brown's Christmas where the kids all get together around the skimpy Christmas tree? With the help of holiday magic, their busy little hands transform a sad little tree into a thing of beauty? That never happened for us. Our ornaments consisted mostly of things us kids had made in school, brownies or cub scouts. Lots of faded construction paper, sequins and macaroni. Grandma had a couple of nice ornaments, but over the years they started to look as "well-loved" as the other ornaments. Styrofoam gingerbread had bites taken out of it and glitter was spread to other ornaments, making everything look like it came from a holiday rave. And dangerous. Our ornaments were dangerous. We had metal can lids decorated with ribbon and Christmas card pictures. One cut from one of those and you risked both botulism AND tetanus. That's why adults today secretly make fun of safety scissors and bike helmets. We think kids today are weak. And after all our hard work, Punkin would climb in the tree and we would lose half of any glass ornaments on it when the tree hit the ground.  After we rescued the cat and tied the tree to the wall, we stood back and admired our  tree. Clumps of ornaments where some kid had gotten bored and put them all in one spot competed with the (sometimes) twinkling lights reflecting off of the broken ornaments on the floor.  The tree may not have been beautiful, but the memories are. Hi Kid,   You should includ the story of how we came about that tree in the first place. We had a real tree that was very dry. Your Mother was out last minute shopping on Chridtmas Eve. There was a sale at JCP's so she bought the tree. When she got it home I took the old or real tree down. While you kids and your Mother were decorating the new tree I carried the old tree to the alley and set it on fire. Some of the neighbors asked what the heck I was doing. I told them that you kids had been bad during the year so  Santa was not coming. Love, Dad