Happiness is: An Unexpected Bargain
“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” around the Massey household. The tree is decorated, along with the fireplace mantle There are red candles on the tables and “The stockings are hung on the fireplace with care, in hope that Saint Nicholas soon will be there.”
Since last Saturday. I have busily been decorating the house. Last Saturday was also the day that our monster Christmas tree was put up in the family room. I call it a monster tree because it is the biggest stalk of pine that has ever graced our family room. Actually I think when it was cut down, it was destined for the world’s largest shopping mall, but in- stead it ended up in the Massey’s family room.
Buying the monster was purely an accident. We intended to buy a normal size tree like everyone else has. When we bought this monster it was very cold outside. In fact the temperature was a chilly four degrees. Now at four degrees, everything is cold including Christmas trees. And when Christmas trees get this cold they refuse to relax their branches. This is when we ran into trouble. With all the trees in the tree lot looking like skinny minnies, we bought a tree that was the right height for the tall ceilings in our family room. This particular tree that was the right height still had the strings tied around it’s branches and was packed with snow.
We brought it home and put it in a warm place to melt the snow before we cut the strings. Well let me tell you, when Mr M cut the strings, the branches started relaxing and a Christmas tree started appearing. The longer it sat the bigger it got. When the lights and ornaments were put in place it was bigger still. For thirty dollars we had unknowingly received the biggest bargain in the history of buying Christmas trees. To make a place for this monster, we had to move a game table and four chairs out of the family room and into the living room. Now our living room is so cluttered it looks like we are moving.
Having a monster Christmas tree has created more than it’s share of problems. Not only was it almost impossible to get it in the house and find space to set it, we do not have enough decorations to fill it. Our decorations are for a normal size tree, not a shopping mall tree. To have enough I would have to buy out the decoration departments of Target and K-Mart. In the hopes that it will never happen again, I refused to buy more decorations, so “Trixie” and one of her friends made big red bows and tied them on the branches. Eighty of them to be exact. It does look good if you happen to like a family room that looks like Santa Claus and his red bow fairies were the interior decorators. By the time the monster gets through relaxing it’s branches. I am sure that my chair in the family room will be completely engulfed in branches, bows and Christmas lights. When this happens, I hope it happens after Christmas and I am sitting in the chair Then maybe nobody can find me to clean up the Christmas mess.
So it seems that only the first two problems are solved with the monster…getting it in the house and decorating it. The biggest problem still lies ahead…getting an eight and one half foot tall, at least six foot across dry Christmas tree out of a 78 inch tall 35 inch wide sliding glass door. It makes me cringe just to think about it. I have been making alternative plans just in case we can’t stand the mess this will make. I have been thinking about just leaving it where it is until next Christmas. We could put hearts on it for Valentines Day. Shamrocks for Saint Patrick’s Day, firecrackers for the fourth of July, Jack-o-lanterns for Halloween and then back to the red bows next Christmas.
Since I know this is a silly idea. I guess I will have to go with alternative plan B. This is the plan where we keep a chain saw in the family room and cut logs for the fireplace as we need them. This might not be a bad idea…where else can you get a cord of pine firewood for a mere thirty dollars?
