Advent Day 13

Tree of 2005, we were teased for getting a small one.

Note the Noma church from the 1940's underneath

Ok, so if you hadn't guessed, I quickly ran out of quotes for Advent. I suspect more organization needs to go into such an endeavour.

So, instead of quotes, I will now move onto my family's Christmas traditions.

Today my dad and I went out and wandered around a snowy field in freezing rain with a saw looking for a Christmas tree.

We have always gone out and cut our own tree, no pre-cut trees for our family. When we were little, I remember going out to the tree farm with my dad and brother, picking the perfect tree for mom, cutting it down, and figuring out how to tie it to the car and bringing it home, and then holding it up for inspection in the driveway when we got home.

As we got older, it became the thing that my brother and I did together when he came home from school for Christmas. We wandered around fields for hours, my brother eventually whining, "Carry me!", which generally led me to sing a chorus of "Carry me, Carrie" (in case you were confused, my brother is almost 3 years older than me and a foot taller).

The last few years, it has been my mom and I going out to get the tree, we made use of our feminine wiles and got the "young lad" at the tree lot to cut the tree for us.

This year, my dad and I went out together for the first time in more than 10 years. We went to new place, and what a mistake, the guy was really just selling off brush from his bush. We eventually discovered that he was selling the spruce trees in his field, they were few and far between, but they were at least Christmas tree shaped and sturdy enough to hold ornaments. So we went out into the field, and I saw a good tree about half-way across, so I set off walking directly there across the field, and told my dad to take the well-trod path to avoid stumps and pitfalls.

So I found the perfect tree, and walked right up to it, and suddenly found myself lying down in the snow with my leg knee deep in a groundhog hole. I was in the middle of a farmer's field with a very painful twisted ankle.

Luckily by the time my dad got there, it had stopped hurting enough that I knew I would be able to walk back to the car. Then, while we were cutting down the tree, my dad cut his ear on a lower branch.

When we finally got home and listed our injuries and the difficulties we had encountered, mom said, "See, there is no way that your father and I can do that on our own. That's it, we are buying an artificial tree in the sales after Christmas."

As I sat down to ice my ankle and discovered a goose-egg on the back of my calf, I conceded that it might be the best plan, as long as they got one with the lights built in.

It is the end of an era.