I heard this morning on the news that 60-70% of people nowadays prefer artificial Christmas trees, for the “convenience factor.” I found that statistic unsurprising. You know I like to keep life simple, but there is a big difference between simple and convenient. I’m a real tree sort of person.
This morning was set aside for our annual family pilgrimage to the Christmas tree lot. We took Seneca with, since he's part of the family, but that was a big DUMB mistake because he peed on one of the expensive $55 Douglas firs when I wasn’t looking and I hoped they didn’t have a “you pee on it, you buy it” policy. Fortunately, Seneca’s aim is bad and he didn’t douse the thing.
I didn’t encourage Seneca to single out the Douglas Fir, but he must have picked up on the fact that they are my least favorite trees. Far too smug. I prefer the old-fashioned, fragrant Balsam Firs or bounteous Scotch Pines. Since last year’s tree was neither simple or convenient (it fell down three times, amidst much swearing, and had to be anchored to the wall), this year we chose a much smaller, 6.5 foot Balsam.
We got it upright in about three minutes. At first, I was a little disappointed by how small it was, but its bungalow-sized suitability and ease of set-up won me over.
I have now decorated the tree, put up Christmas lights outside, and begun working on Christmas cards in earnest.
The only small deviation I made from the work today was to bid on one small Christmas item for myself: an old box of weights, one weight missing. (You see, when I went to find a picture, for illustrative emphasis, of the sort of weights I was talking about in the previous post, I copied the picture from an e-bay listing.)
Today, as I was looking at the picture again, I realized it would be significant, to me, to have that very set of weights itself; it would be helpful to handle them, to meditate on their various densities, to wonder about the one missing, while I work out the ordering of my life.
Juno of Enchanting Juno wrote to me once that blogging offered her many moments of “heightened lucidity” and that it was mighty handy to have them in a blog for easy reference. I know what she means. But, for Christmas, I just wanted a physical reminder of a lucid moment that would be there on my desk, catching my eye on a daily basis, whether I sought it out or not.
Without having to log on.
10:48:36 PM 
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