Trask Avenue

The holiday season fades away. We’re speeding headfirst into January and the heart of winter. As such I can now reveal the sad and deplorable truth: Our Christmas tree is a shambles, a droopy mess, a meager and utter disgrace to the mighty tradition of Christmas trees worldwide. If our Christmas tree were a movie it would be Glitter without the glitter, Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo without the incisive social commentary, Little Fockers without snappy dialogue. Charlie Brown picked a better looking tree. See that broken stick in the yard? That would be an upgrade. When Santa saw our tree he probably thought we were Druids which, I suppose, explains the gift of black cloaks.

Our sorry excuse for a Christmas tree would be (somewhat) acceptable if, indeed, it were real. And by “real” I mean once alive but then ruthlessly killed specifically to give me a few weeks of holiday bliss. But it’s not real. It’s fake and that makes its mere existence even more egregious. One thinks a fake tree would be perfectly shaped, a marvel to behold. Isn’t that the point? To have a tree so stupendous that angels descend from on high singing Oh Holy Night in their perfect angelic voices? To stop people cold and make them involuntarily “ooh” and “aah” at the majesty of artificial Douglas Fir? I thought it was, but apparently when I chose this monstrosity a few years back I was drunk or blind or blind drunk. This sucker has more gaps than a Kardashian’s grasp of social graces. It’s skimpier than Paris Hilton on a liquid diet. When a breeze blows through its “branches” it sounds like a pigeon caught in a combine. It’s so gruesomely fake even Playboy said, “No thanks, we’ll pass.”

You may be thinking, “How bad can it be?” I can answer that: Mind-Blowing Bad. It’s so bad that a truckload of decorations can’t redeem this popsicle of pathetic plastic pine. Check that. One decoration can redeem it – the old school trick of placing lit candles on the Christmas tree. With any luck the candles would cause a conflagration which would be remembered across six counties for many years to come. Not for its mighty and awesome display of nature’s power, but rather for the deep and abiding good it did by ridding the world of this abomination. Talk about a rapturous whoosh of crackling flames. Joy to the world indeed! Yet somehow I think burned to a nub is too good for this horrific mass of holidays gone bad.

Tomorrow I’ll clear this Christmas nightmare out of the living room. If I had any sense I would transport it directly to its rightful place in the dump. If I were a wise man I would pitch it into the trash faster than Mel Gibson can spit out a new insult. If I were motivated I would not place it back in its box and haul it to the attic where it will remain out of sight until next December when the new fake trees become available at ridiculously inflated prices. But apparently I’m not very motivated. After all, this tree has already survived more than one holiday season. And the dump is so far away. And it’s cold outside. And and and…