Three Trees?

Yep. Three trees. We have three Christmas trees in the house.



By Abby's second Christmas I realized that she and I needed our own trees. Our tastes in Christmas tree decoration were incompatible. You see, she decorates much as any other child does. First, she insists that only colored lights can be used, never white. And then the lower one eighth of the tree gets covered in ornaments. Each limb in that tight one eighth area has six ornaments on it. And every colorful, imaginative and psycho ornament in the box gets crammed into that one eighth of the tree while the rest of the limbs stay bare. And then, as the month marches ever closer to Christmas, those ornaments move around the tree - one by one or two by two - until a different one eighth of the tree is covered in ornaments. Sometimes ornaments leave the tree altogether and wind up on a table or chair or on top of a present. The movement never ends. Sigh.



Me, I like organization. I like themes and coordinated colors. I like white lights. Now, I can understand how some may think this is boring and without spunk. I perfectly agree. Sometimes I don't like a well ordered tree. But usually, I like the neatness of one or two color combinations. That's not to say that I don't use our personal ornaments, the ones collected over our lifetimes. I just use the ones that mostly match the chosen color scheme and add ribbons or garlands or "boring" ornaments that better suite the scheme. Yeah, yeah, I know. I am that kind of person.



For my personal sanity, I needed to have my own Christmas tree. And really, how much harder is it to get two trees instead of one? Of course, at the time we were renting a tiny house, which barely had enough room for one Christmas tree. And we hadn't yet discovered the joy of cheap Christmas trees - you know what I'm talking about. Charlie Brown trees - the kind that are so ugly and ragged that they barely qualify as a "tree." Once we moved, though, I got two trees.

I thought it worked out perfectly. The two live trees cost a total of $22 dollars. Abby got her own colorful tree and I got my own coordinated tree. They were not perfect trees in any sense of the word. Mine had a trunk that split at the top into two tops - try to fit a star on that! And Abby's had needles falling off it every five minutes - by three days after Christmas the darn thing was practically bare. But it suited our needs. We were both happy.

But what about Lee? He actually asked, in a sarcastic sort of way, where his own tree was. So I got him one that was in proportion to the amount of effort I estimated he would put into caring for and decorating his own tree. I got him an actual Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Not alive, a simple wooden stand, one ornament, and a felt "tree skirt." Yep, the perfect tree for Lee.



And that's the story of how our family of three got three trees for Christmas. A family tradition now.