O Tannenbaum

I am home for Christmas break. Since arriving in Moss Point, I have been enjoying the sundry items that accompany a trip home: visits to the dentist, barber, lenscrafters, and shoe stores. Don't you do such things when you return home?

The climax of this running around came Tuesday when my father and I spent the greater part of the day searching in vain for a Christmas tree. We began the day by driving to a tree farm 35 miles north of home in Lucedale, MS. Upon our arrival, we encountered a sign that directed us to “honk horn” and wait for the owner to arrive. After honking our horn repeatedly, we investigated and discovered that the proprietors of the farm were simply not home. We waited for over an hour, perused the many trees available, and picked out our favorite, but no one ever appeared. So we left.

Bozo’s Market in Pascagoula, where we got our tree last year, was sold out and closed down. Lowe’s in Pascagoula was sold out, as well. By this point, it was late afternoon and we were growing increasingly uncertain of our ability to complete this seemingly simple task of finding a tree. Surely Lowe’s in Biloxi, 30 miles west, would have one. Being the quick learners we are, we called ahead this time to ask. Sure enough, the lawn and garden manager at Lowe’s confirmed that they, indeed, had four trees left.

We arrived in Biloxi half an hour later to find four of the most dry, decrepit, diseased evergreens you have everseen. (sorry, couldn't resist the play on words). Now, of course, we all have that Charlie Brown impulse that tells us to purchase the poor pathetic tree and “give it a home” (as if the inside of someone’s house could ever be an appropriate home for a pine tree). But let me tell you, that impulse was absurd in the presence of the leftover trees Lowe’s had in stock. Those four trees were likely cut sometime in early November and shipped down from Canada to the Lowe’s parking lot where they have been sitting waterless for almost two months while ambitious tree shoppers picked over them, jostled them, and certainly maligned them verbally. Beneath each nearly naked tree laid a neatly swept pile of jettisoned needles approaching 16 inches deep. Had we loaded one on top of our car and driven it home, we would have strewn pine needles along the interstate all the way back to Moss Point and arrived with a brown skeleton from which to hang our beloved ornaments. My father and I assessed this situation, repressed the Charlie Brown adoptive impulse, and went home empty handed.

The situation was resolved the next day when my dad, faced with the blatantly un-American prospect of a treeless Christmas (I think this was outlawed in the Patriot Act?), made a return journey to the Lucedale tree farm. Fortunately, this time the owners were present, and he was able to return with a strapping young leland cypress.

So at long last, today, on December 21, four days before Christmas, we actually have a tree. Oddly though, when I helped move it into the house, my arms broke out in a rash. This is an unprecedented event in my epidermal history.

If I were Pat Robertson, and I insisted upon interpreting all the events around me as being coded messages from God, I think the moral of this story would be pretty clear. Christmas trees are of the Devil, and we should stay the heck away from them. Don't you agree?

Stay tuned. More posts to come soon.