tongue in cheek rant about artificial trees

[curliet]

I'm taking a break. My left eye is twitching. I can hardly hold my coffee cup because my hand is trembling.

After several years of using the artificial prelit tree that we 'inherited' when my parents died, we had to send it off to the twinkling part of the landfill. I am allergic to real pine trees, love them, but develope severe hives just having one in the house. We decided to go out and get a less expensive new tree of the same type we had. In the 20 years since that tree was first used, things have changed.

I think that I have discovered how the terrorists that hate us are going to be able to undermine and do us in. It's with things like the new tree that we bought. As I opened the big box it seemed fairly simple, 3 parts and a stand, and a single sheet of instructions. I put the bottom in the stand, located the plug that you put into the outlet and made sure that it was turned in the right direction. Started pulling the branches down and separating the little 'twigs' to fill out the tree. Hey!! The little twigs don't separate very well. They have the cord wrapped around them several times. Wait, not only is the cord wrapped around it, the little lights are twisted together too. Not just twisted, they are tied together in knots. And the reason that the section that I just finished looks so clumpy is because there are some of those little twigs that are actually twisted around each other 4 or 5 times. That can't happen accidentally when they are laying this thing in the box. Someone had to have done this while the tree was being put together.

So...my theory is that those people in those other countries that make the things we buy and speak English with a weird accent (tenjuberrymud) (Peggy) are doing this deliberately so that we will be made insane trying to deal with the products that we think we need.

Remember, this is all tongue in cheek, sarcasm, whatever you want to call it.

 

[gritsar]

I'm kinda thankful that we aren't putting up a tree this year. If I could have a real one, I'd put it up in a heartbeat. Only I have two cats and two dogs. Doesn't mix well with Christmas trees.
In storage I have a 7 ft. artificial one. Hate it. I was all enthusiastic when we bought it back in 2006, but have since decided that the pre-strung colored lights on it don't mesh with my mostly purple and silver decorations. Plus, one small section of the lights is out on it and this drives me and my OCD insane.
Also in storage - two small trees. One about 2 ft. tall, the other 3 ft. I hate the cheap little trees. They look so funky after the first use.
DH won't buy a new tall artificial one, with what he considers to be a perfectly good one in the storage building. I won't use the little ones cuz they're ugly.
Can't have a real one because of the animals.
Yep, no christmas tree for us this year.

 

[StevenW.]

We have 2 christmas trees this year....... A real one and a fake one

 

[Rozzie]

I don't like bending out the little twigs, either.

Mine is not a prelit tree, so it has each branch that gets inserted into the "trunk" separately.

I store the pieces for each layer in separate boxes or bags. I don't worry about fitting them into the original box. This way, I don't have to smush them. It's only necessary for me to tweak the tree a bit, instead of bending all those twigs out.

It makes it more pleasant.

With your prelit tree, if you have space in a basement, garage, or attic -- just take off the decorations at the end of the year and store the thing as it is. Wrap it in some old sheets to keep it from getting dusty. You can just pull it out and decorate next year!

 

[Ema]

hahaha, my Dh is allergic to pine tree sap, breaks out in hives too. funny enough we live out in the boonies and 40 of our 50 acres of land are mostly pines LOL.

we have had a prelit tree for 5 years now the same one, its all white and I can't even tell you how many little lights it has but its a lot. It was certainly not a cheap tree either, though now you can get the real cheapy ones that look like mine for a fraction of the price. But anyways, I really have my crazed moments when first putting up the tree, the bending and pulling of each strand, the finding a white plug on three different sections against the white interior of the tree ugh, drives me insane, only to spend an hour trying to fill out the tree properly, and then have the dog or Dh or one of the kids bump right square into it and bend it all up where they smacked into it...lol...

however once its all done I feel better and the rest of the tree decorations go on real smoothly. then around the end of the first week of january I look at the tree knowing I have to take it all down and put it all away. every year I am tempted to put the whole thing in an over sized zippered bag and wheel the whole thing into the storage room as it is. But no, I know my little glass decorations, and the fragile ones that the kids grandpa (who recently passed away) sent them every december would get broken, so yes, I carefully take it all down and put it away!!

It looks so pretty when its finally up though!!!

 

[33yardbirds]

Ours is about 3' tall. Go up in the attic, bring it down, take the trash bag off, reshape it, replace any decorations that fell to the bottom of the bag, plug it in and it's Christmas. Years ago my daughter and I took a 3' tree and but every light we had on it. We named that one "The Burning Bush".