Day 2: Christmas Trees

Growing up we always had a real Christmas Tree. The smell was amazing! We would lay the skirt around the bottom and put all kinds of ornaments on it. We also have always had cats. For some reason the tree would become cat territory. The cats would nestle themselves under the tree, usually in the back among the presents, and sleep there.  I don’t know if it was the smell of the outdoors, the unlimited supply of pine infused water, or the dangling tree ornaments that attracted them to it.  I do know that you were just about guaranteed a cat jumping out of the tree and making a mad dash away from kids who came to look at the presents. In the meantime, scaring the crap out of us kids.

Even in college my roommates and I insisted on a real tree. We had a nice friend drive us to Walmart and we bought what we could with what little money we had. It was our Charley Brown tree. It was more of a branch than a tree. We elevated it on a box, that we wrapped, just to make it look a little bigger. It did the job and had an amazing smell too.

Since getting married we have only had the artificial trees.  More cost efficient and pre-lit so no more hassle with lights. The one thing I miss was the amazing smell a real tree brings into the home. One year I found these sticks that you put on your tree and they smell like pine or fur or whatever tree smell you wanted. What I didn’t anticipate was how strong that smell would be.  I hung 3 or 4 around the tree and within an hour my house was over run with the smell of pine.  It was too strong.  So I took all but one down.  The smell was still too much. I was determined I would get use to it and left it up.  I think that was the stinkiest Christmas we ever had. I won’t be doing that ever again.  Maybe since we have a pine tree now I’ll try taking a cutting and putting it somewhere in our home just so I can have that amazing smell again.

Our tree this year.