Christmas Tree Follies-1

In a crazy sort of way, I thought an artificial Christmas tree could live forever.  Even though I cringed every year at getting our tree put together, once it was up, I was #allin for the joy of decorating and admiring how it would turn out. 

In 2019, putting it up was no different...except we moved the location of the tree this year from the sun room to the family room.  The tree stand creaked and cracked as we began adding branches this year (the whole fam helped).  Level by level, color by faded & frazzled color, branch by branch, it went up as expected...was decorated and looked glorious by night's end.

The weeks before Christmas came and went and we enjoyed the baubles and sparkles in the darkness of December.  There's just something so cheery about gazing on the love that our tree exuded.  I felt foolish in thinking about how much I groaned over getting the branches attached at the beginning versus all the joy it brought as we prepared for the Christmas season.

Just a few days after Christmas, as we were all in full vacation mode.  I was cleaning up my crafting room when my daughter ran downstairs to get me...

"Mom, we need you!  The Christmas tree fell!"

"Wait-what?  Are you kidding me?"

"No, come upstairs, the tree fell!  Dad's holding it!"

I secretly thought-oh, she's just trying to trick me...so I played along and rushed upstairs.  I was reminded she wasn't kidding and this was a serious matter.

As I ran up the stairs, as soon as I hit the landing, my eyes zoomed to the tree!  Sure enough, it had fallen and several ornaments lay in disarray around the family room with a few who met their breaking points.  I was shocked and then suddenly, realized my husband was still trying to hold what remained of a three legged Christmas tree upright.

"What happened?"  I blurted in an exhaustive sort of way...

"Well, I just lightly bumped a branch when I was going behind the tree to add the wires for the Roku and the next thing I know I looked back and it had fallen."  said my hubby in a sheepishly sorry tone.

"So you couldn't react quickly enough to save it from falling before it hit the floor and the ornaments fell off and broke?"

"I didn't know it happened!" he explained.

...

I was angry with him for quite awhile as I cleaned up the broken glass and put the ornaments away in their boxes, took off the garland, removed the strings of lights and the layers of branches one by one...I know the tree was old.  I know it really wasn't his fault-the plastic stand base had become brittle and just couldn't take one more bump- I thought the tree could live forever.

So this year, ironically, we have no pictures of our family by the tree...no pictures of the gifts Santa delivered on Christmas Eve.  No pictures of the happy smiles Christmas Day brought.   I regret all of that thinking the tree could live forever.

Now, the tree has met its demise.  A new tree has arrived in it's place...a metal stand model (no more plastic), reaching new heights and put up as easy as 1,     2,     3.  Plug in and presto!  we have lights!  turned on with a remote no less.

I won't take for granted that it will last forever but I sure hope it lasts a long time.  Happy new tree and a happy new year...finding the new tree was its own adventure.