O Tannebaum....

My tannebaum...why is it I love thee.

I love my Christmas tree-all four of them.

In fact I have loved every Christmas tree I have ever had in the past.

Last year I did not put up a tree because Dick and I took a 14 day holiday cruise on the Queen Mary II. You can read about that in past blogs.

This year my artificial tree took revenge on me for keeping it in the attic since I put it away after Christmas 2006.

First, I decided that I wanted to change where we put the tree. We had purchased the tree to stand in the front room that has a 19' ceiling. The tree was about 10'. So, I decided that I wanted to see it this year. We put it in the sun room where we hang out most of the time. That has a 9' foot ceiling. If you do the math you will see that there is a bit of a problem.

The tree has four sections and the obvious solution was to leave a section out. I had put about 4000 lights on the tree in the past and left the lights on for storage as per directions included with the tree. This is where the tree revenge comes in. A few of the strands did not respond to electrical stimulation. A few strands only half lit up. This meant that I had to take all 4000 lights off the tree.

I am still having fun because I love Christmas trees so much.

Next day I evaluate the dozens of strands and figure that I can salavage about half of them. It is off to Lowe's to buy more lights. Except that Lowe's pulled a fast one on me this year. They had their after Chirstmas 50% sale last week. No lights. I go to Target...they did the same thing. No multi colored mini lights. I go to WalMart...no mini lights. Finally, I go to Rite Aide, a drug store. It has lots of lights on sale....but the lights are on white wires. I want green to blend in witht the tree. I go to Ben Franklin sort of a local Michael's and they are sold out of lights. I go to the dollar store and they are sold out. I go to Giant, a grocery store and they are sold out. We are talking a full two weeks before Christmas! So I go back to Rite Aide and get the while mini lights.

I decide to position the tree in a corner. I want to use the green wire lights for the parts of the tree that show the most in the room. The white wire lights can be strung on the branches closer to the trunk. If you put 6000 (up I have 6000 mini lights on and 8'ft tree) lights on a tree that means even the interior branches get about two lights each.

It took about a week to get the tree lights on. But I still love my tree and I am still enjoying the process. I just don't know why retailers have to have post Chirstmas sales two weeks before Chirstmas.

A few nights ago Dick and I took down the two boxes of decorations and put them on the tree. I have collected these decorations all my life. Everywhere I go I get a decoration for the tree. Every decoration has a story. So it took us about two days to decorate the tree because I had to tell the story of each decoration. It is important to tell the story of decorations so that when I am dead and gone and my family sorts through my junk they will know that I loved my Christmas tree, Christmas lights and most of all the decroations. They will want to keep the decorations to decorate their trees and hopefully tell the story of the decoration to their children and grandchildren.

Oh Tannebaum, My Tannebaum

Why is it I love you?

Oh Tannebaum, My tannebaum

I love you because

you mean alot to me.