Counter Point: Oh, Christmas Tree!

I love Christmas! But I also repsect Thanksgiving. Out of respect for Thanksgiving, I try to avoid displaying my affection for Christmas until Black Friday. This Thanksgiving we were down in Scipio, Utah with Ashley's extended family. We got back around ten that night. I couldn't sleep, so once midnight came and went, I decided to start cleaning the house. Then I thought, "Why clean the house? It's just going to get messy again in the morning when we get out all the Christmas decorations." So I decided to postpone cleaning and started decorating.

I went into our storage closet and pulled out all the decorations, including the Christmas tree. Our Christmas tree is artificial. A certain someone didn't want to spend the money each year to buy a fresh tree. "Okay," I said. "I can live with that." But then that certain someone vetoed all my artificial tree suggestions---playing the poor and impoverished card when asked to spend $200 on a nice pre-lit tree. "Fine. Whatever you want sweetie," was my reply.

The tree we finally ended up getting was a $35 one from WalMart. I finally agree to this one since the display looked decent and it was only $35. When I got the tree home (last year), I went to take it out of the box, expecting there to be about five pieces. But no, there were like thirty-five pieces: each branch was its own piece and there were like seven tiers! "Oh great, this is going to be fun."

So, this year I again took all the pieces out of the box and began setting up the tree. I thought it would be a nice surprise to have Ashley wake up and see the tree all lit. Well, I got into a good light stringing rhythym (two twists of lights on each little branch), but I ran out of lights about halfway through. Last year I must not have been so meticulous with the lights.

At two in the morning I headed to Wally World to get some more lights. I figued three more strands should do since the top is not as large as the bottom (I'm a thinker). Well, I ran out of lights again! This time about eighteen inches from the top. Too tired to go to WalMart again, I went to bed, figuring I would get more lights in the morning.

The next morning I showed Ashley how great the tree looked---well, the bottom five feet that had lights on them. She thought it looked great too. But then Scrooge told me that I couldn't go spend another $1.98 on another strand of lights to finish the top! She made me use about three freet of lights to finish the top of the tree. Now, everytime I look at this tree I am reminded of what could have been: a perfectly uniform distribution of lights throughout the entire tree. Instead of the glimmering brightness of the eight strands of beautiful lights reminding me of the glorious day our Savior was born---signaled by a new spectacular star---my attention is focused, rather, on the dark void at the top of the tree, reminding me of those who refuse to let the Christmas spirit permeat their cold, dark souls.

In honor of our Christmas tree, I have re-written the famous coniferous ode: