Christmas trees

Watching other people, I feel like I somehow missed a key component of the Christmas tree experience. There’s a place just down the road that sells them, and it has a lot of different sizes this year (even the trees are smaller in this economy!) and so every time I drive past, I see people loading them up.

Now, when I was a child (and we still bought full-sized trees) the tree went first in my father’s hatchback with the back seat folded down, and then into the bed of the pickup that followed when the hatchback went to the big parking lot in the sky.

But apparently tying the tree to your roof is an important part of the whole endeavor. I say this because being part of the ritual is the only thing that makes sense after I watched person after person lovingly tying three-quarter-sized trees to the top of SUVs that could have fit the whole thing in the trunk without even angling it much. Car carpets vacuum, you know.

It does make me think about those cars getting home to their streets, though, and sitting beaming in the driveway while the humans go get the stand ready.
Car with tree: Look! Look! Look what I brought home! All by myself! Isn’t it great? Isn’t it HUGE?
Car next door: Oh. That? On your roof? I’m sorry, for a minute there I couldn’t even see it. I thought you’d snagged a branch when off-roading.
Car with tree: *stare, open-mouthed, start to tear up*
Car on other side: Oh, honey. Is it your first? Uh-huh? Well, it’s a very nice tree for your first. Don’t listen to him down the road. They’ll get bigger as you get more experienced.