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| Out on a Limb Last-Minute Christmas Tree Shopping Can Be a Risky Business. |
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But my worst Christmas shopping transgression isn't putting off buying a tie for Uncle Joe or a sweater for Aunt Louise. Where I really drop the ball is when it comes to buying a Christmas tree. It's not that I intentionally avoid it. In fact, each year I look forward to a downright Dickens-like experience. I picture myself strolling to the local nursery on a crisp winter day, clutching a mug of hot apple cider with a cinnamon stick poking out of it, and bidding fairest Christmas wishes to Mr. Fezziwig as I mull over a selection of plump and healthy firs and evergreens in my quest for "the finest tree in all the land." But no such luck. Thanks to my procrastination, my Dickensian fantasy ends up instead as a frantic last-minute affair with me standing in a dark, bleak parking lot in the freezing rain amidst a Dali-esque landscape of gnarled leftover Christmas trees (actually closer to Christmas cacti), brushing icicles from my nose while I deal with a tree salesman whose breath is visible in winter and, one suspects, summer as well. So, instead of the "finest tree in all the land," I end up settling for one that looks like it's had a really bad haircut. Last year was no different. I arrived at the tree vendor at my usual five minutes till closing. Thanks to the freezing rain, Jack Frost wasn't just nipping at my nose, he was gnawing on it. I looked over the inventory and the pickings were slim indeed. Since most of the trees that were left were too scrawny, I finally settled on a tree that was about twice as big as I had any business buying. The tree was huge but sort of crooked, so I decided to try to get the salesman to come down off the price. This turned a time-honored yuletide tradition into a complex psychological war of wills: I knew that in a few days his entire inventory would be worthless, and he could tell from the look in my eye that I was running out of time and pretty damn desperate. My problem is I'm not very good at this dickering business. I always feel funny denegrating something I want to buy just to lower the price, particularly if that object's supposed to embody peace and goodwill for all mankind. Buying the tree was the easy part. The hard part was getting the thing home. First, the salesman tried to put it in my trunk. After twenty minutes of trying to wedge the green behemoth into the trunk, he finally concluded that we should tie it to the roof, assuring me that it wouldn't hurt a thing. He neglected to mention that he was, in effect, strapping a giant green Brillo pad to the roof of my car. When I got home, I was faced with the dilemma of having to get the green monster from the car to the house. After much trial and error, I came up with a technique of swinging it from side to side that worked well enough but came uncomfortably close to dancing. After a few yards I started to get the hang of it and, for a brief moment, I even considered dipping--but noticed one of my neighbors giving me a strange look and, since doing the cha-cha with a conifer is not one of the things I want to be known for, I abandoned the maneuver. The worst part of the whole incident was that the tree was a better dancer than I was. But if getting the tree up to the house was tough, getting it through the doorway was something you'd have to experience to fully appreciate. Let's just say that the process was something akin to being on intimate terms with an extremely large porcupine. Curiously enough, the act of squeezing through the doorway with the tree and being stuck by thousands of needles seemed to serve as a form of acupuncture on a mass scale, both causing and curing immense pain at the same time. The next step was to get the tree into its metal stand, which turned into a maddening little game called "Is it Straight?" No sooner than I got the tree to look right from one angle, I would walk around to the other side where it looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I finally concluded that my tree was designed by M.C. Escher. Then came time to trim the tree. Here I encountered one of life's greatest mysteries: No matter how carefully you store the Christmas lights the year before, they are always tangled up when you take them out of the box the following year. Finally after untangling the lights and wrapping them around the tree and then adding an ample portion of tinsel, icicles, and baubles, I turned off the lights and prepared for the big moment. I plugged in the Christmas lights, and my Jolly Green Giant of a tree lit up like the mothership from Close Encounters. I half expected a door to open up and extraterrestrials to come pouring out. Exhausted, I put on a Christmas album, made myself a tall glass of eggnog, and sat back to admire my holiday handiwork. That was last year. This year, of course, I swear I'll do it right. And I will. Just not today. Photoillustration by Barry Willis |
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