Oh Christmas Tree

It's that time of year again.  Some start early November with the decorating.  For others, the first days after Thanksgivivng.  Others, like is, sometime in December.

Growing up, my memories are bittersweet.   For some reason, we would make the drive from Belzoni to Yazoo City to pick up a tree that an uncle had picked out for us.  It would be standing in a bucket on the side of the house, in the shade.  Then, when we moved to Inverness, as teenagers with a driver's  license, my mom told us to drive over to Indianola to pick out a tree and bring it home to decorate.  What???  We get to pick it out?  How big?  What kind?  We were full of questions about an event that we were about to experience for the first time!

We ended up with the same scotch pine tree that our uncle always picked out.  It didn't matter, because it was our tree!  We didn't know to check out the trunk for straightness.  I don't  think any scotch pine ever had a straight trunk.  I think this one fell over a couple of times before we secured it to the wall.  Again, it didn't matter, because it was ours!

When our kids were small, we made tree buying a family event.  Our favorite was the Frasier Fur.  Needles didn't stick, good shape, and easy to decorate.  We did this every year, til the time we got it home, and the boys announced "we're done.  Off to something else!"  That tree sat in the stand, outside for quite some time, before it was brought inside, again waiting for someone to decorate it.  Eventually, it got done, but the family experience time was changed forever.

Next up was our first purchase of a prelit artificial tree.  Big one, from Callaways, during the big after Christmas sale.  We justified the cost by figuring that it would last at least ten years, and no issues with watering or needle dropping.

We had the same issues with decorating the tree, two boys with no interest.  The spousal unit had a stroke of genius, borrow our little friend Jessica for a day and "get r done"!  That worked great for a few years, but now, Jessica is all grown up and off to college.

Well, that tree served us well.  The strings of lights eventually failed.  OMG!  The time I spent pulling off the old and adding the new!  This past year, we finally went the full circle of life.  The boys and a girly friend did the decorating!  It seemed to be the appropriate send off for that tree!  Off it went to garbage dump land!

Now, a year has past, and no tree.  It's almost like my teenage years again.  Been so long, live or artificial?  Prelit or not?  Big and tall, or scaled back?  Wonder who will be decorating it this go round?    Yep!  We've come full circle around the.Ole Christmas Tree!