O &@#$% Christmas Tree!

The annual ritual of getting and decorating a Christmas tree goes a long way toward imbuing me with holiday spirit. Over here at the Some Assembly Required household, we have achieved 2006's tree, but it wasn't easy. We are what my grandparents' generation would have called a "mixed marriage"--I'm of the Christian persuasion, the Mrs. is not. However, this is not a source of conflict: neither of us is religiously observant, and she does not mind having a Christmas tree in the house because its origins are pagan, and because it makes the house smell good ("Like a giant air freshener," she says, and it's true).

But the Mrs. is (understandably) not enthused about being involved in choosing a tree, bringing it home, or decorating it. In past years I could walk to a nearby park, where a local organization set up a tree sales lot every year, and with the help of another person, could carry the tree back to my house on foot in about ten minutes. But you may remember that we moved several months ago, so that's no longer an option. I could not find a similar setup anywhere near our new home, so I enlisted the help of a friend. Last Tuesday after work we went to the nearby Home Depot, where they had lots and lots of trees, most for the reasonable price of $30. They cut the trunk, they put it through that funky machine that encases it in a net bag, they helped us tie it to the roof of the car. (Thanks, Home Depot person named Liz.)

But when we got back to the house with the tree, I discovered that in the process of moving, I had ethier misplaced or discarded my tree stand. I'm honestly not sure which, and I can't find any conclusive evidence to support either possibility. But it's fairly large, so there are only a few boxes it could have been in, and it wasn't in any of them. I figured it would be a simple task to just go out and get another one. Yeah, right.

Over the course of the next three days (keeping in mind I had to fit these trips around other silly stuff like working and sleeping), I went to the following places, none of which had any tree stands: one Brooks Drug; two Walgreens (quite possibly the most depressing and useless stores on the planet); three different CVS stores (they had one advertised in their flyer, but I never saw one); Kmart (where I actually found a helpful human who told me they'd sold out), Bed Bath & Beyond (a long shot, I know); a Christmas Tree Shop (oh, the irony--isn't this why they exist?); the Home Depot where I'd purchased the tree (they had only outdoor decorations). By the way, all this time my tree was sitting in the garage, wondering what it had done wrong to be punished in this way.

Finally on Saturday, I knew I had to interrupt my regularly scheduled holiday shopping to find a stand before my head exploded. I know I should have just gone to Target, but the buses only run once an hour, so it's a tedious and somewhat out-of-the-way trip. So I decided to think strategically about where I would be most likely to find one. I ended up at the Central Square branch of a locally-owned store called Economy Hardware. They're a kind of one-stop shop for college living; in addition to all the regular hardware goodies, they carry everything from unfinished pine dressers to toaster ovens. And, mercifully, holiday decorations and accessories. As a bonus for running all over greater Boston, it was 40% off.

The Mrs. was kind enough to give me a hand getting the tree in the house and into the stand. We did that yesterday, but after being wrapped up for so long, I knew it would need at least a full day for the branches to fall open, so the decorating is going to take place tonight, perhaps while watching Monday Night Football (in our house, we root for the Patriots and whichever team is playing the Colts). After everything I went through, I'm thinking of keeping it up as long as it survives. Valentine's tree?

Now, to get working on those cards...