Buying a Christmas Tree

The first year that my husband and I were married, getting a Christmas tree was a big deal for us, not just because it was our first tree as a married couple, but because it was my husband's first Christmas tree ever.  My husband is Jewish so not surprisingly, his family did not have Christmas trees.  He put a lot of effort into carefully researching the places around here to get a tree.  Since we were new to the area, we really didn't know where to go.  He ended up finding a Christmas tree farm a short distance away.  Then he even informed me of an extra special treat:  we could cut down our own tree!  We could barely contain our excitement.  Looking back on that now makes me laugh.  While I had grown up having Christmas trees every year and spent a lot time mulling over which tree was the perfect one for our family, I had never had the opportunity to cut down my very own tree.  I didn't even know you could do such a thing.   I would practically be at one with the tree!

Of course since we didn't have kids, we slept in that morning and took our time to get ready and get out the door.  While I don't remember it specifically, I can pretty much guarantee that we probably went out for brunch or stopped somewhere for a nice leisurely cup of coffee.  Looking back on this also makes me laugh.   Being able to  take five sips of coffee in a row without interruption would be a leisurely cup of coffee for me now. 

By the time we actually made it over to the Christmas tree farm, it was dark.  Dark and cold.  We were tired.  My enthusiasm had started to fizzle.  I began to wonder how long it would take to cut down a tree.  We got out of the car and told the person working that we wanted to cut down a tree.  He said he just needed to get a saw for us.  I was picturing a chain saw.  What he gave us looked like a toy saw.  I thought it was a joke.  It wasn't.  I swear my kids have more powerful plastic toy saws than the saw he said gave us to use.  We looked at each other and both suggested at the same time merely getting one of the trees that had already been cut.  I mean really, there wasn't any difference.  In fact, we realized that our most perfect tree was not on the farm to begin with, but rather sitting in the rack of pre-cut trees waiting to be purchased.   If we had gone to cut down a tree, we would have missed this  ideal tree.  At least that's what we told ourselves as we loaded our new tree onto the top of car.  Then we proceeded to drive about 5 miles an hour on the busy, two-lane road with a 50 mph speed limit that we had to take to get home while hoping that the tree wouldn't fall off the car. Remember how I said the farm was a bit of a distance away?  That meant it took about 5 times as long to get home.  Now we buy our tree already cut and from a place that's only 10 minutes from our house.