The story of a Christmas tree

First you have to go to a tree farm. If you are experienced, you already know which farms are muddy, which are on a hill, which are likely to have birds nests hidden in the trees and which ones have hot chocolate. First you will try a tree farm close to home but you will discover that Christmas tree farms close to home never actually have Christmas trees that are ready to be cut down. You will drive 250 miles and find one that is just a big empty field with a few trees randomly planted a long time ago. This tree farm will not have hot chocolate. Or restrooms.

At this point in the adventure, you will realize that you are cold and that everyone has to go to the bathroom. One of your children will have an asthma attack. You will find a tree 3 miles from the car and your pants will be wet and muddy from lying on the sodden ground to cut down your almost-perfect tree. Someone might announce that this will positively be the absolutely last year you will ever cut down your own Christmas tree. Everyone will still have to go to the bathroom.

The big people will struggle mightily to wrestle the 40 foot tree to the top of the car and tie it on with some package string and scotch tape and hope it stays put. Then you will drive home at 15 miles per hour, people behind you alternately honking impatiently and swerving in panic when it appears as though the Giant Sumac atop the car is about to catapult toward their windshield.

You will arrive home exhausted and trudge into the house, collapse and completely forget about the tree perched precariously on top of the car. You will remember the next morning when you march out the door, 15 minutes late for the Sunday School Christmas pageant practice, in the midst of a torrential downpour. The tree will hold tight long enough to make it to the church parking lot where several of God's children will point with laughter at your vehicle and you will duck down behind the steering wheel hoping that no one recognizes the 483 Strawberry Shortcake stickers your daughter has adorned her car window with. They will.

One of the big people will be convinced to cut the packing string off the tree and push the tree into a mud puddle beside the car before dashing madly back into the house and declaring the intention never to go outside again. The tree will wait in the rain. Eventually one of the big people will decide that the tree should come inside and will drag it through the kitchen and the dining room, knocking every magnet off the refrigerator and picture off the wall, leaving streaks of mud in its wake. After three hours of wrestling the stabbing needles of death into the tree stand and adjusting the tilt approximately 3572 times, the tree will be in place, awaiting adornment.

Three weeks later, the tree will still be in place awaiting adornment. If you have remembered to water the tree, it will still have some needles. One of the big people will decide to put Christmas lights on the tree and spend the next week untangling the lights that you are sure were put away very neatly the year before. If you are lucky, nobody will swear. The children will eventually decide to decorate the tree on their own and will randomly bring ornaments up from their hiding place in the basement one at a time. You will feel the need to remind them every three seconds NOT to put the ornaments in their mouths because the ornaments are made in China and are surely poisonous. The children will feel the need to taste the ornaments just to be sure.

Eventually one of the big people will feel guilty enough to bring all of the ornaments out of the basement and the decorating will begin in earnest. The children will pick one spot toward the right bottom corner of the tree and put 95% of the ornaments on three branches.

You will decide that what the tree is missing is popcorn strings and you will set the children to work hoping that they will not stab each other with the needles. The dog will eat the first popcorn string. The children will persevere on, fortified by the 15 pounds of popcorn they consume in the process. You will hang their creations on the tree. A cat will climb the tree to reach a popcorn string and eat half of it meanwhile knocking every single ornament onto the ground. The dog will eat a few ornaments before you manage to get them back on the tree.

Finally, you will finish the decorating and you will discover that the tree is not located near any outlets and that the only extension cord you can find is bright orange and must be stretched across the length of the house to the nearest outlet. Your cats will chew the orange extension cord. You will eventually realize that there is an outlet behind the tree that your smallest child can reach if she lies flat on her stomach and holds her breath as she inches under the tree and tries not to knock it over.

Finally, you will plug in the lights and declare that this is the best Christmas tree ever.