The Year My Tree Tried to Kill Me

"By mid-December the tree had all but died. The needles, having severed their tenuous ties to the oppressive regime of the tree proper, had struck out to colonize the entire apartment. They were everywhere. Literally. Like sand in a bathing suit, they had somehow managed to lodge themselves into every conceivable nook and cranny, where they lurked, like coniferous kamikazes, waiting for their chance to strike at the webbing betwixt my toes."

Russ Pitts recounts the sordid tale of the year he turned 30 and was almost murdered by a tree.

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Haha. Nice work. I too am a subscriber to the belief that alcohol can cure any ill. You just have to make sure that the level of alcohol is maintained at a predefined constant, so that you don't wake up with a thumping hangover, and your ailment to contend with.

I like the way your friend thinks.

I'm swiftly turning 27 and alcohol still makes me pukey. I Think the sugar is the magical cure.

Plus, I loved this story. I will use a word grown men find distaste for... cute... shh, don't make me repeat it.

Fake trees.

Seriously, buy it once, and no pines until it's like 20 years old (like my family's current one). It may not be as "authentic", but I've never run into the trouble other people have with real ones.

Fake trees are the king of all holiday inventions.

But fake trees look terrible and don't give you that lovely pine fragrance!

Real trees is the only way to go, lethal or not.

My whole childhood, we always used real trees. And when I say real trees, I mean LIVE trees. Balled trees. Every house we lived in is surrounded by pine trees in various sizes because we bought them live, and planted them after we were done with them. You can sort of gauge how long my family was in a house based on the count of pine trees...

Since my sister and I moved away from home, the effort involved in getting a balled tree, bringing it home (that ball of roots and dirt is NOT light), setting it up, and planting it afterwards, is just a little much for my parents to deal with. Plus, the last few years, we had to keep it on the back porch because my mother developed some allergies that just got worse as time went on. So, maybe the last 2 years, we just had this anemic, Charlie Brown Christmas tree that my mom bought for decorative purposes, which is literally a pine BRANCH, with wire/plastic pine-needled fronds sticking out of it.

This year, they bought a quality fake tree. It won't be the same, but there's a certain point where the balled trees just aren't worth it, and that silly branch becomes shameful.

You can buy real trees with roots still intact. They come with burlap balls of dirt on the bottom that end up adding a foot or so in height. They're more expensive, but they don't die (as long as you water them) and you can plant them after the holiday season.