My Christmas Confession
I’m a child of the 70s and 80s and the daughter of a man who never liked to spend a dime. I remember Christmases spent visiting family and friends. I would covet their perfect, plastic trees like a child with a J.C.Penney catalog. The trees at my house belonged in the Land of Misfit Toys. My dad and I would don boots and coats and head off to the field to find the perfect (free) tree. It was never that perfect triangular shaped Frazier fir. It was usually a bomb-shaped, sad Cypress or Spruce. My dad’s only concerns were ‘evergreen’ and ‘free’. Each year I had high hopes as we left the house of finding a REAL Christmas tree, yet each year we brought home the first cedar we came across. My dad passed away when I was 15, and I’m pretty sure the first thing my mom and I bought was a fake tree.
Fast forward a few years, and thanks to Martha Stewart, the REAL tree has made a huge comeback. Most people aren’t walking around out in their kin-folks backyards for a tree. Martha has taught us all that while we DO need a real tree, it needs to be pretty darn close to perfect. Enter my husband, Scott, and his garden center, sitting bare during the cold winter months. Selling big beautiful Christmas trees was a natural fit. So now, from Thanksgiving to Christmas, we help supply our community with near-perfect real trees.
Here’s the confession part. Three years ago I was VERY pregnant during the holiday rush season. We decided to get a.......FAKE.....tree. There, I said it. I was so tired and watering that darn tree for three weeks seemed like such a daunting task (you would think I was having to feed it three meals a day). The whole family climbed into the SUV and traveled up to Pigeon Forge, to pick the perfect fake tree in the comfort of a controlled temperature environment. We even found one that was pre-lit! Oh joy!!!
We brought home the boxed tree and opened it in the den. Oh, the excitement of that perfect, no maintenance tree. We put it up, plugged it in and BAM! That was it.....we hated it. What an ugly tree. No amount of fluffing would make it look like the model in the store. I thought maybe after I put the decorations on it...no, it was awful. So, we ended up with TWO trees. I was too tired to turn around and take the fake tree in the den down after all of that work. We put the real tree in the living room in front of the picture window. It was perfect. Did we KNOW deep down we were going to hate the fake tree? Why had we stuck it down in the den where no one else could see it while leaving the prime window space free? I guess we’ll never know. I only know that the fake tree hasn’t left the basement since we took it down on Christmas day three years ago.
So with my great confession, I want to thank all of our customers who make the effort to come out in the cold and rain; and if we are lucky, snow; to spend the time to pick out a real tree. We hope you guys enjoy the season as much as we do.
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