Women in Comfortable Shoes

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12/03/2003: "Fresh Cut (Part Two)"

As promised, here are the Twelve Tree-Cutting Tips of Christmas (props to Mel for the list's title). You can use these tips when locating and cutting down a fresh Christmas tree. We learned what to do by trial and error and we hope these guidelines help make your tree-cutting experience fun and fruitful:

1. Bring someone along to help hold the tree while you cut (or you hold it while they cut). Or, better yet, have the high school student assigned to the tree area cut it down for you.
2. When you find a good tree but want to look at a few more, make sure you have a good visual reference to its location. Otherwise, you will drive yourself crazy trying to figure out where you found that perfect tree you saw just a few minutes ago. You would think the trees rearrange themselves behind your back.
3. Wear gardening or work gloves so that the needles don't pierce your skin when you are holding or dragging the tree.
4. Avoid kneeling in fire ant mounds, cockleburrs, or cow patties. However, if you end your tree-hunt in the emergency room in anaphalatic shock, go ahead and grab some supplies while you are there. You can trim your tree with a garland of used hypos and blow up a latex surgical glove for the tree-topper star.
5. Bring a gardener's kneepad. See tip No. 4.
6. Understand that large trees always look smaller in the field than in your living room; small trees always look larger in the field than in your living room.
7. Allow at least 6 inches lost to cutting and another couple of inches lost when you make a fresh cut at home and trim the bottom branches to get it into the tree stand. Then you have to trim a few more branches to get the bottom even again.
8. Set up the tree in your yard and hose it off with a high-pressure spray before bringing it into the house. The water washes away any remaining dead needles, dirt, pollen, and any remaining critters that might have hung on during the ride home. If you live in an apartment, you could try a self-service car wash. Beware, though. Someone might send over the men in white coats if they think it strange to wash a tree.
9. Make sure you let the tree dry before bringing it inside. Combining wet trees with strings of Christmas lights makes for one heck of a light show. Once.
10. Have someone help hold the tree while you adjust the tree stand (or you hold it while they adjust the tree stand). After you are done adjusting the tree, you may have to find a good chiropracter to adjust you.
11. No matter how perfectly you align the tree while it is in the back yard, you have to do it all over again once you get it inside, so just wait until it is in the house to fine tune it.
12. Above all, relax and have a good time. If it's not perfect, it's still your Christmas tree. And that makes it perfect for this year. Like Charlie Brown, you can make the most of its features with just a little effort. Turn the bare spot toward the wall. Wedge small packages into sparse areas. Hang lighter ornaments on weaker branches. Hang lots of ornaments to cover up bad spots. And if it's crooked, hang all the ornaments a bit crooked and pronounce it a Seussian masterpiece.

Happy Christmas tree-hunting!