Bernard

Doesn't that tree just look awesome? I know it does. Even if it is a little old and has lost some of its luster I think that makes it a little better of a tree. This is a tree with a history. I suppose that it is fitting. Ever notice that when you hang up all of your ornaments on the tree you are really hanging up years and years of your history? ... Wha? I was just about to write something really sweet and caring but I am now trying to figure out how on earth a baby can get a full man fart out? Did this kid just blast my lap full of methane? Thank God that he has that diaper on but I think I'd better change it soon or it might go radio active.

Either way. When I look at the tree I see all the years that I have been alive. Everything from the year that my mom painted bears for us to the time I got a little fire hydrant with water bursting out the top and a little bear sitting on it. These are the things that I remember as a kid and they are the things that makes Christmas magical. I guess. (Had to throw that in there or you might think I wasn't really writing this.)

The Monday before Christmas! DUN DUN DUN. Both Wal-Mart and CVS were like machines. People were in and out as fast as a gun shooting off in every directions all over the store. The bullets placed their sights on what ever prize they thought was worth grabbing and pulled it with them like gluttonous magnets. Filling their carts as if they were fat Christmas sacks shoved full of goodies to be placed under a artificial tree. Now that is the greatest irony of the whole holiday. Please tell me your Christmas is less artificial than your tree.

After work we wrapped the last of the presents and placed them under the tree setting it up like a photograph probably because it makes use feel better about what we bought. I suppose something pretty is better than something ugly. But our house was almost as full into the Christmas look as it was going to get this year. Now the day was only a few days away.

In Ukraine they put ornaments of spiders web on the tree. The tale says that there was a lady who was to poor to afford to make the tree pretty. (how she got the tree we'll never know.) So she left it bare and on Christmas day she woke up to find spiders had decorated it with web. Now if you ask me she probably went a little Rip Van Winkle and he house just got old and dirty... but maybe that takes from the magic of the story.

--Kerry