You may remember just a few weeks ago I was boasting, undeservingly so, about having our Christmas decorations up early.
It was my wife’s idea to set up her artificial Martha Stewart-type tree weeks ago, saying a friend heard a friend say those who do it early experience less holiday stress.
Since I had to painfully dig out my wife’s fake tree, I also grabbed the outdoor decorations that were burying everything else and put those up, too.
Although very proud and satisfied, it hasn’t made me any less stressed. Instead, it lulled me into a false sense of seasonal security that came back to haunt me this final week before Christmas.
While wallowing in my checked off “honey-do” list, I forgot to pencil in a date to get a real tree. You know, kids and stuff.
It just wouldn’t be the same without a place to hang the tacky singing Elvis, the Dale Earhart memorial NASCAR bulb or the ornaments with all of our names on them from Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Not to mention the smell.
Yes, we still have two trees every year. The real-vs.-fake debate has been ongoing throughout our 18-year marriage, and that’s not going to change now.
I’m certainly not going down without dropping a few hundred needles, and I prefer a good forearm rash to the smell of toxic plastic and dust.
Yes, there were only a few left at our usual nursery tree depot when my son and I got there Wednesday, less than a week before Christmas, but nowadays they’re all top-drawer Canadian products and grown to perfection.
When I asked the weathered Christmas tree salesman if the tree I found looked like a good one, he nodded his head like he already has hundreds of times this year.
Even though there were only about a dozen of his 500 trees left, they were all good.
And so were we, by starting early and leaving it to the last minute.
Oh, Christmas tree!
Scott Thompson is the host of The Scott Thompson Show on Global News Radio 900 CHML.
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