The Salem Leader
Educationally Speaking
Justin Harter
12/15/08

 

Installing the Christmas Tree

 

I’m really not much of a Christmas person. Obviously I really liked Christmas when I was a kid, mostly because I really enjoyed getting things. But, as I’ve gotten older I fell off the Christmas wagon. I’m not exactly religious and I’m also not a big fan of spending my money – two things that Christmas seems to require. I’m also not a big fan of decorations. If other people want to stand out in the cold and throw small white lights on their bushes and setup tacky-looking wireframe reindeer in their driveways, more power to them.

 

It’s not surprising then that I’ve never bought a tree or any decorations for my apartments and now my home. A few years ago when I lived with my roommate in Noblesville, he wanted to setup a tree. I told him he’d have to buy everything. I did relent a little and buy the $1.39 roll of ribbon to wrap around the tree.

My experience there was that my roommate went to Wal-Mart and bought a seven-foot tall tree.  He clearly wanted to rival Rockefeller Center and the White House. It did, however, make use of the vaulted ceiling in our living room and compensate for the fact that neither of us had much furniture. The tree was so large, the box wouldn’t even fit in his car and he called me wondering what to do. I told him to take it out of the box and throw all the random pieces in the trunk, backseat, glove box and wherever else there was room.

 

This tree experience was before I had my cats. But my roomie’s dog, Snickers, was very much a factor. I could tell as the tree was being assembled she was just sitting there waiting for the opportunity to beaver some ribbon or garland into a million pieces on the living room floor. This was also before either one of us owned ladders, which provided for some interesting decorating techniques up top and a markedly un-decorated swaft of tree at the very top. I distinctly remember watching my roommate wrap the lights around with a broomstick and Snickers taking a leak on the tree in the back corner nearest the wall.

 

This year, my good friend Brandon thought I needed a tree so bad his parents gave me a smaller tree they just had laying around in their garage. Anytime I see something that ultimately goes into my house, I stop and think: “If I were a cat, what would I think when I look at this?” I was skeptical that a large tree with dangling balls and shiny things would ever last in my house with two curious cats. But, they were all so insistent and I was thankful this tree was only 5.5 feet tall and not 7.

 

So, I brought the tree home and a few donated decorations and started setting up. Naturally, the tree was in a box and required assembly. As I cleared a corner of my living room and started unloading tree parts, I soon realized the numbers had worn off the stickers indicating what parts went on which rung of the tree. That left me with comparing faded sticker colors and sizes in piles. Suddenly, I was playing a match game.

After that came the lights and ribbon. The lights were easy. The ribbon, on the other hand, was not. As I kept pulling ribbon off the roll and wrapping it around the tree it kept getting lost behind limbs and falling flat. We also made the mistake of setting the tree in the corner, then putting the ribbon on. In retrospect, it would have been easier to bring the tree out a little and installing decorations through a process known as “walking around the tree.”

 

Lastly came hanging the ornamental balls that came in four basic styles: shiny red, shiny green and glittery red and glittery green. Today, two weeks later, I am still trying to get the glitter off my hands. This stuff could be used as weaponry.

 

And, two weeks later, I have on four occasions found ornamental balls courtesy of my cats in the far reaches of the living room, lodged under the couch and in the kitchen. I’ve also awakened to the sound of a ball being swatted back and forth on the kitchen floor in the middle of the night. This resulted in me doing a little re-decorating of the tree. Now, the bottom two feet is pretty bare. Which, is fitting considering my old roommate’s tree was bare at the very top because we couldn’t reach it. This tree is bare at the bottom because everything can reach it.

 

Maybe next year I’ll just print out a picture of a really pretty tree, frame it and then hang it on the wall.