Decorating the Tree

Comments by ZingerBug.com   It's almost that time of the year when we dig out the tree and make it beautiful with all of the ornaments that we have collected over the years. Some people put up many trees...God Bless them...I put up a large one and a pencil tree on my sunporch. I do love to decorate the tree, but I have found that as I get older, it gets to be a little more work. When my children were small, we would look for a real Christmas tree, ahhh, the fresh smell of pine, nothing like it at Christmas time. Sometimes there would even be small pinecones on the tree and the warmth from the lights on the tree would make the pine cones crackle.  It was fun...and cold...looking for the perfect tree, but something you will always remember. 
 We did the real trees for a long time and then decided to get an artificial tree. I've had at least four artificial trees. They started out large and then became smaller throughout the years...it must have something to do with the getting older thing! I used to string the lights on and now they are prelit and I must say I like the prelit trees. The lights are strung on nicely so that you can barely see the wire.
My tradition is to have some wine while decorating the tree and listening to Christmas music. It usually takes me all day to finish the tree. Something I find very upsetting is when you get the tree up and plug it in.....guess what....half of the lights work and the other half don't. Nice. This happened after we had bought a tree at Pool City, had it up one Christmas and the following Christmas half of the lights were out. Tested the lights, couldn't find the problem, went to Pool City, took the receipt to show we had it only one year, and they gave us a bunch of replacement lights...with a plug only on one end. Nothing else they could do...nothing else...we paid $300.00 for this tree and that's the best you can do???? Well, I tried to put these lights on a prelit tree and it just wasn't getting it if you know what I mean, so I got really upset after arguing about it with my husband, took the tree apart, stuffed it back into the box, kicking it into the box, sort of like Chevy Chase did in Christmas Vacation, when he got upset because his lights weren't working and he started kicking Santa and the reindeer all over the front lawn...I can relate to that. Anyway, we took it to the nearest dumpster and bought another one. It seems like every year I have some sort of light problems to deal with....yikes....but after it's all done, the tree and the outside decorations, look beautiful. I will always decorate a tree for Christmas even when I'm much older, even if it's just a pencil tree or a tabletop tree. I'll never forget that Christmas magic.