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.

Personally, I have hated christmas trees for a long time. Their fragrance is lovely. They are quite pretty, more so when decorated. My issue with them, however, is that they are, when it all boils down to it, just trees. The needles are a constant source of pain, often right into late February. When I was about eleven, while trying to decorate my family's christmas tree, it fell on me. That hurt. I have found reasons to gripe about them ever since.

Mr Pitts, I propose a call to arms. We who are made to suffer at the hands of these pointy beasts shall suffer in silence no longer! From November the 6th, we shall assemble the mightiest pile of these dastardly trees known to man, and on December 25th, petrol and fire will produce the largest Christmas Candle ever seen!

We could call it trying to imitate the star the kings followed or something...any excuse. Do I have an ally?

I'd take a thin, anemic one over the fat monster trees my mother makes us all cut down and haul home every year (usually during the first of Michigan's copious snowfalls). They are so big the farm owners can't even bind them with rope so they're easier to put on top of the van, and we have to throw ourselves at it to get it through our back door. Stepping on a pine needle is a picnic after you've had branches of them bitch slap you across the face repeatedly.

Though I was secretly happy the year one of them gave her poison ivy. Never before had I felt that nature and I been so in tune with each other at that moment.

Russ Pitts:
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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The year my sister left for college, I was the last remaining child in the house. It was just me and the Moms. And the moms decided to buy some new, revolutionary tree stand. Which is to say, she bought a gimmicky piece of crap. It took forever to get the tree to stay up. I left her to finish the decorations after the second hour - I had school in the morning. About 45 minutes later I was awakened by a cacaphonous scream. The tree had fallen over on my mother. She was uninjured, but for the rest of the season that tree was propped up by phone books.

My family has always been into real Christmas trees. I don't like fake trees because they just show the artificial and consumer side of Christmas, where a real tree actually is inviting and warm (Although don't try and hug it, that's not a good idea).

The only time we ever had a fake Christmas tree was when we were living in the Middle East over Christmas, and yeah, hard to find a good Norfolk Pine over there.

You could always try those tiny rosemary plants they have that are in the shape of Christmas trees. It gives the house a nice smell, and you have fresh herbs. You can either keep grooming it, or let it grow outside and go au natural. I've seen them in Grocery Stores and Mega-Marts. Near the section where they sell those flowers and such.