I picked the tallest one of the lot – the best and fullest as far as I could see. When they’re bound there’s really no way of knowing for sure.
I paid my $65, fired it into the back of the Vibe and brought it home, where I already had the stand ready and full of water. I brought our Christmas tree into the living room, placed it in said stand, and cut the netting. I stood back to take in the majestic fullness of it – the tree that would help us ring in the holiday season.
From what I’ve gathered from others I’ve spoken to over the last couple weeks, the disappointment I experienced at this important purchase was not an isolated incident. The sparsely-branched Fraser fir was one of the saddest sights I’ve seen in terms of a Christmas tree. It was lopsided, patchy and barren. Uninspiring to say the least. When you pay hard-earned dollars for something, you at least expect to get a semblance of what you pay for.
After a very brief text conversation with my missus, I took it back. I’ve never returned a Christmas tree before – I didn’t even know if they would take it back, to be honest. But after firing it back into the dwindling pile and showing it to the cashier who rang it through, she couldn’t argue against it. Would I like a replacement or just my money back? She already knew the answer without me even saying a word. My laughter evidently was response enough.
Perhaps the most tragic thing about the whole interaction was that tree more than likely wound up in the dumpster behind the corporate-owned local store that shall not be named. Even though given its general appearance and relative youth, that tree shouldn’t have been cut down in the first place. It’s general knowledge that there has been a Christmas tree shortage the last couple years, but chopping down any sort of coniferous breed just to satisfy holiday supply and demand aspects is not the answer.
Corporations obviously couldn’t care less about this, so long as their festive holiday gouging continues unabated. And if you are going to try and sell that sad state of a tree, swindling your clientele for $65 when it was worth maybe $5 is also not the solution. In fact, it’s rather insulting as a consumer.
So no, I did not refer back to that sad pile of evergreen boughs for our tree this year. Instead, we were generously invited by friends to cut down a much more appropriate tree from their ample wood lot just outside of Palmerston. I always feel guilty every time we either purchase a tree or cut one down ourselves, the wastefulness speaks for itself. Between that and the further plastic wastefulness aspect of an artificial tree, what route do you take?
Frank Costanza of Seinfeld infamy may have been on to something with his ‘Festivus’ approach. Now I just have to convince my family to embrace an aluminum pole instead of a tree. “I find tinsel distracting…”
A word or 60 about me ma
I reckon my mom is going to like that Seinfeld reference. I often refer to her and my old man as Frank and Estelle Costanza, especially when driving anywhere with them. If anything, the trip always proves to be entertaining.
Me ma is turning 60 on Monday. Mom was always the youngest parent out of any group of friends I ran with; she had my sister and I fairly young, which I now understand in retrospect proved to be a brilliant manoeuvre now that I have kids myself. Yes, having children young means that you might miss out on some more things in your 20s and 30s, but it also means you have a lot more energy to parent – not to mention much more free time in your 40s and 50s. As I draw closer and closer to 40, I really, really understand this more every day. Most of them are spent running on fumes’ fumes.
Mom and I are very much alike in personality and interests. We both trended towards being students of English and history, while my father and sister had brains more suited for the cold calculations of arithmetic-ing (that’s definitely not a word, but I digress). We’re both self-professed science fiction geeks, we both tend to clam up when we’re pissed off, and we both enjoy a cocktail mixed with a hearty chuckle.
I didn’t always take my mother’s advice when I should have in my younger, more reckless days. But she never judged me when I didn’t; she was good enough to give me my space and let me figure out how much I had screwed up on my own. She is gentle and kind, and yet still commands respect without ever demanding it. She will also no doubt be mortified that I singled her out for a portion of this week’s column.
Me ma is without question one of my favourite people, and I wish her a very happy birthday.
“George likes the bananas!”
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you back here in a fortnight.
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This is a bi-weekly opinion column; for question or comment email Dan McNee at dmcnee@midwesternnewspapers.com.
