Our fake tree

Tonight, Jamie and I assembled a fake Christmas tree in our house. A fake tree.

I have always had a real tree. In fact, in the early, years, we even chopped our own tree down. This picture is from my first Christmas (1979) doing just that. I was 10 months old, and obviously Brenna gets her desire to release herself from her mother's hold from me.

My parents tried out a fake tree a couple of years ago. After that trial year, they decided to go back to real trees because my father is a child at heart, and he didn't get the complete Christmas feeling from a fake tree. Not to mention that me and my two adult sisters did not react well to it, especially Kelly, who comes home to my parents' house on her Christmas breaks from school.

Jamie and I are both big advocates of real trees. Last year, Jamie videotaped a pregnant me as I decorated our way-too-huge tree. The year before, I got this good shot of Jamie and Lilly (as a puppy) putting up the tree on our first married Christmas together.


But, this year, we were talking about where we would even put it. That same corner of our living room now looks like this (even though I swore it never would), and Jamie expects Santa to come early and put a 42" tv in that corner. I'm sure Brenna will look forward to a larger Elmo, as if her watching t.v. wasn't bad enough.

Of course, we could move a lot of Brenna's toys to our basement, where most of them are anyway, but even if we did clear the space, she's creeping/crawling fast now. She goes after everything she's not supposed to and puts everything in her mouth - like ornaments and fallen tree needles. We had visions of disasters taking place.

So, we thought maybe for this year only, we would put up a fake tree in the dining room - in the front windows of our house - where we spend little time, but it would look nice to see first thing as you arrive home. But, we didn't want to buy a fake tree for only one year's use. And then I remembered that my parents happened to have one, so I asked about it last week.

At first, my mom told me that my dad donated it to a nun from their parish. But, this morning she was in the attic getting down her own decorations, and she found it. It turns out that no one answered the door at the convent when my dad tried to be the Good Samaritan, so they stored it away and forgot about it.

So, I went to my parents house today to pick it up, and then me and my mom went Christmas shopping and out to lunch (Panera!).

It was a very Christmasy day (it even snowed a little bit), and our house is starting to feel very cozy and festive, even if it doesn't smell like pine. I like it. But, we are getting a real tree next year.