Faking the Tree

You can fake fur and smiles, and, as I know now, pretty Christmas trees! We’ve put our Kinston, NC house on the market (For some reason everyone thinks this means we’re leaving town… We’re not. We just want a fun new house project!) and, to ease the stress of keeping things perfectly organized and clean while we’re showing it, we rented a house in a different neighborhood. They have lovely floors, and I didn’t want to risk damaging them with a real tree, so, for the first time in my entire life, I got a fake tree.

In my mind, buying a fake tree was going to be easy. Two hours, two Wal-Marts and my entire babysitter time later, I broke down and bought an 8-foot, flocked, pre-lit tree instead of the 5-foot, non-lit, flocked tree I was promised was waiting for me at the second, thirty-minute-away Wal-Mart. Because it wasn’t waiting… I was sweaty (it was 70 degrees and I had on a wool sweater) and tired and very non-holiday feeling.

Here’s the thing about an 8-foot tree. It wouldn’t fit in my car. And while I was trying to take it apart to shove it in there section by section a lady was harassing me to buy pirated DVDs.

Then I got home. And couldn’t. Find. The directions. I had this idea in my head that Will was going to get home and his Elf on the Shelf (first year for that!) was going to be waiting underneath this gorgeously lit tree with a note from Santa. So I couldn’t put this off on hubby. I was going to have to go it alone. I nearly electrocuted myself (the plugs didn’t have the plastic parts on them but since I had to leave the box in the parking lot, it wasn’t like I could return the thing!) and was covered in fake snow flocking that I now know is… flame retardant. It makes sense that your fake tree would need to be flame retardant. But it’s sort of ironic since I bought us all certified organic mattresses and procure flame retardant-free jammies for Will. I’m so paranoid about the chemicals.

At any rate, I got the thing together and up and a flame-retardant snow-covered mother was waiting to present her child with his elf from Santa. We decorated the tree with all these big, bright turquoise, hot pink and lime green ornaments — not a Christopher Radko, or Old World Christmas or hand-blown anything in the bunch!

And Will was so excited about the whole thing that I forgot how hot and irritated I had been all day. And I realized a few ornaments and a couple of Christmas songs in that not only did I really feel in the holiday spirit, but that I also kind of loved my big, bright, fake tree. Which goes to show: You can’t fake holiday spirit. But you can totally fake the tree!