MULTICOLORED CHRISTMAS TREE GLORY

Mrs. Brown believed in real trees for Christmas, she believed in going out as a family and picking out that perfect tree and cutting it down. After cutting it down they’ll put it atop the car and drive to a nearby diner and eat burgers.

It was another one of her favorite holiday traditions.

But every year it seemed that her children just were not into it like they once were, and they couldn't cut it down themselves because no one really wanted to so they had to get someone else to do it and that ruined the whole family thing and... well it just wasn’t the same.

This year they almost didn’t do it. It was getting close to christmas, only nine more days, and the whole house was decorated head to toe except for a tree. The place where the tree usually stood in the livingroom was sadly empty. Mrs. Brown had tried to arrange a day to get the tree but one of the children were always busy.

But on this monday, nine days before Christmas, Grayson insisted that everyone had to go get a tree. It wasn’t a choice.

“It would be Christmas without a tree,” he insisted.

And he was right, they did have to go get a tree. Harriette had been thinking about it too, everyday when she sat in the living room doing her homework she would look up and notice the absence of the tree. It didn’t quite feel like Christmas yet, even with the bannister covered in garland and wreaths hanging from each of the doors.

Collin didn’t understand why they didn’t just get a fake tree. They didn’t need to go out and cut down a real tree, sure they had a certain charm to them but nothing so important that they couldn’t just skip over it and get a fake one. If they got a fake one they would never have to worry about getting the whole family together and out to the door to the somehow always muddy tree farm. Maybe they watered their trees a bit too much.

But still when Collin came home from school that monday and Grayson told everyone to get ready for some tree cutting he went up to his room and got ready for some tree cutting.

The twins on the other hand were excited as always, along with Tamarai who never seemed to get over the excitement of getting a Christmas tree. They all had their “woodsy” clothes on and were ready by the door in fifteen minutes.

And with that the family piled themselves into the car and drove forty five minutes away to the “BETTER TREE FARM”. What they were better than, who knew?

And after another forty five minutes they were putting a six feet tall tree onto the top of their blue SUV. This was Collin’s least favorite part, because since he was one of the tallest people in this family, the tallest ones were Bobby and Fisher both of whom were not there, he had the “pleasure” of helping Grayson get that tree on their car. They could have gotten help from one of the employees at the farm, but no, their sweet mother wanted them to do it themselves.

“We’ve never needed help before,” she always said.

Thirty minutes later Harriette was helping Collin pick the needles out of him hair as their mom chatted it up with one of the employees.

“I’m never doing this again,” Collin said, “I don’t care if mom wants a real tree next year, I’m not helping pick it out.”

Harriette frowned, “But it’s a tradition.”

“Well some traditions get old,” Collin said.

Harriette shrugged.

She had actually had fun up until then, seeing Collin upset kind of made her upset too. But walking through the acres of trees and inputting her opinion on each one was fun, plus her mom just seemed so happy on these days.

Finally they got back into the car and drove to that nearby diner to eat some burgers, something they all wanted to do. Well not Grayson, who was a vegan and didn’t exactly like being around other people eating meat but he was okay with it for today and ordered himself a veggie burger.

It’s hard to please everyone.

Once they got home they had to get the tree inside, and this time Tamarai helped get the tree off the car because Collin disappeared as soon as the car was parked.

He reappeared again later when they actually decorated the tree, that was really something everyone wanted to do. And they all had fun as they put all of the mismatched ornaments onto the huge tree. And when they were done and it was all lit up in it’s Christmas tree glory they turned off the lights and drank hot cocoa by the bright multicolored lights of the tree.

And Maybe next year they might not all go to cut the tree down, but they will all sit by the light of the tree and drink their hot chocolate. Nobody had a problem with that.