Saturday, December 8, 2007

Ode To The Fake Tree

Sung to the tune of "Oh Christmas Tree"

Oh fakey tree, Oh fakey tree
Oh tree of green unfading.

Oh plastic tree, oh plastic tree,
your pre-lit branches please me.

You're waiting in your cardboard box,
convenient and no trunk to chop.

Oh artificial loveliness,
You never leak your sap out.

There was a tree that was so dry
no needles left and I did sigh,

"The hardware store sells trees half-price,
on Christmas Eve, lets buy one!"

That's how you came to be our tree
Oh I do love you dearly

Don't have to wait on husband now,
when your time to shine comes yearly.

This will be our third year with an artificial tree. We would usually go into "the back 40" and cut our own, but what looks good outside doesn't always look (or fit) so well inside. Then there was the year that the tree decided to leak it's sap onto everything--from the ornaments to the carpet. What a mess---happy flippin' holidays!

For a few years we bought a tree at the local tree lot. First to find a time when husband could fit it into his busy schedule to come with us with the pick-up truck to transport the thing, then forking out the 50-60 bucks, then the waiting for husband to trim the bottom of the trunk off so that it would drink it's water, put it in the stand, and bring it in. This sometimes took days. And lets not even talk about getting rid of the thing once Christmas was over...

I found that the trees from the lot would dry out quickly and 3 years ago we had the tree that broke the camel's back. This tree was so dry and losing needles so quickly that by Christmas we were going to wake up to a festive brown twig and a carpet of needles. I had been looking at the artificial ones and noticed that all Christmas items went on sale at Ace Hardware on Christmas Eve.

On the 24th of December, I drove to the hardware store, got my pre-lit, easy to put up fake tree, brought it home, completely undecorated the real tree, threw it out the door, spent 20 minutes cleaning up needles, put up my new tree and redecorated. I've never looked back. Yay for fake!

1 comment:

Holly (2 Kids and Tired) said...

I LOVE my artifical tree. I might get a smaller one for a different room some day, but I won't go back to a large real tree. No way.