Drabble by Kevin Fagan for November 30, 2020

At least Oogie can’t get at it…

If you want an artificial tree, you havent any choice in the matter. They all come that way.

That . . . would do it.

Well June I didn’t see you going out to buy one nor offering to decorate it. I am sure you will come up with some excuse.

Does Ralph not want to go out to look for real trees and take a chance of getting COVID?

Claiming you’re saving a tree by not having one at all.

We’ve got one of those. . .really nifty. . .I decorated it the first year we got it, red bows and fav ornaments and all. . .put it on the table just yesterday. . .looks REALLY good. . .

I guess things change, grog. When I was a kid, artificial trees weren’t pre-assembled, much less decorated.

What happened to the good old days of pink aluminum Xmas trees?

One year we had some temporary space constraints and so we had to make do with a tabletop tree. I got one that was not only pre-decorated but also had fiberoptic lighting and rotated with music. My kids loved it and we used it for about 15 years until the electric connections didn’t work any more.

How about ordering it from Amazon and then leaving it in the box.

Kids are all grown up. No need for a “Fresh” tree anymore. Love the “Fake” Tree!

We aren’t sure if we will be able to have a tree this year, we got “new” kittens and they don’t slow down and are everywhere climbing and running. We had a cat before that made us tie the tree to the wall and she used to also eat the branches (yeah the fake ones) caused some problems.

to return Dec. 26th?

That’ll save all that trouble of taking it out and putting it back later.

Yeah! Christmas is supposed to be harried, a giant hassle, lots of work, short tempers, and sniping among family members.

I have two trees now, both artificial, but green. Both lighted. One big, which is getting harder to put up each year (I’m not young) and one small. Since there are no parties this year I’ll do the small one. I got plenty of fights, which I’ll use, and plenty of victorian decorations of which I’ll need less of this year. After the pandemic (war) I’ll put up the big one again.

As a matter of fact, the first artificial tree I bought back in 1985 was already decorated. Walgreens was having this great sale on trees. The one by me was sold out, but the one by my parents still had one, so I went to get it. When I got there, they said the only tree they had was the one on display. I said that was OK, so they took it in back to box it up. When I got it home I found they hadn’t bothered to take off ANY of the ornaments OR LIGHTS.