The Christmas Tree

Several years ago we bought a tabletop Christmas tree.  It was about three foot tall and fit perfectly on the entry table in our previous home.  The lighted tree looked pretty good for a couple of years and then the lights quit working and that was the end of that tree.  We replaced that tree with another similar one.

This year I had the perfect place for the tree in the front window. I spent the day selecting all the ornaments with special meaning for this year’s tree.   I was proud as punch when I opened the plantation shutters and plugged in the tree.  I turned off the lights inside the house and ran outside to see how our tree  looked from the street. It was good, in fact really good.  

On my way back to the house the bottom string of lights went out, well that’s a bummer, maybe Monty could work his magic and get them working.  Monty speaks fuses and such and knows the words to coax even cranky lights to work, but not this time.  So now we have a tree with lights along the top third and that’s it.  

Monty was still fussing with the fuses when the top of the tree also went dark.  So now we have a nice little tree in our front window without any lights and it looks a little pathetic. We have two choices: buy a couple of strings of lights for this one or just buy a new pre-light tree.  We opted for the new tree.  

After all it isn’t a major expense, Amazon had a nice little tree that appeared to look just like the current one for $29.95 and it would be delivered tomorrow.  Perfect, now I get busy un-decorating the current tree and wait for the new one to be delivered.  

Hurray, the Amazon truck is here, quick let’s  see the new tree.  Hmmm, this doesn’t look much like the picture, in fact Charlie Brown might even be disappointed in this scraggly thing.  This tree looks like it has been on a Slimfast diet, it is so skinny.  It has a tuft of green stuff at the end of bare wire branches and the tree looks like it was put together with old metal clothes hangers.   Well, this is disappointing.  Monty is mumbling Baa Humbug and I’m trying to figure out plan ‘B’.  

OK, we’ll take the broken strings of lights off the old tree and buy a couple of new strings to put on it.  After further examination, the tree  lights are almost permanently fixed on the branches with tiny little zip ties.  Monty pronounced that task, too much trouble. OK, how ‘bout we leave the old lights on and just add the new ones.  

This plan works but there isn’t much room for any actual ornaments, but hey, at night, from the street,  the tree looks pretty good. Oh and the lights twinkle, at least one of the strings does, maybe it’s only the blue lights that twinkle, who knows!  

The new skinny Charlie Brown tree is outside on the patio table.  I think the neighbors across the fairway can almost see its tiny  lights!