I have a public admission to make. When I hear friends talking about the multiple Christmas trees in their homes or see the photos of said trees, I say to myself, “Self, what is wrong with these people?”

And, no, this has nothing to do with my inherent thriftiness.

I’ve heard some mothers – note the use of the word some – joke that they forgot the pain of childbirth, which is the reason they had subsequent children.

That’s the way I feel after decorating a Christmas tree. Every year I’m so mentally and physically exhausted that I have to recuperate in a bacta tank. I cannot imagine being so energized by the process that, after finishing a tree, I say, “The living room tree is up. Let’s move on to the kitchen tree so we can decorate the bathroom trees.”

It’s not so much the stringing of the lights or the hanging of the ornaments. It’s the shaping of the branches. I’m always surprised when I assemble the sections of the tree and they don’t magically take shape. We have phones that can take photos. We can, if we choose, tell someone named Alexis to turn off our electronics. We can watch our front doors from anywhere in the galaxy. A self-shaping Christmas tree is not too much to ask for.

This year was especially exhausting because I bought a new tree. No, I did not pull off a heist. At my advanced age, I had purchased one full-sized tree. When the branches on that tree legit fell off, I inherited a hand-me-down tree. This year, I agonized over the decision to buy a tree. Then I remembered one day several years ago when I took my mom shopping. As she agonized over whether to buy a tree, I encouraged her to do so, telling her that she and my dad had worked hard. You deserve that fancy-adjacent new tree, I said to her.

With those words echoing in my memory, I decided to buy a fancy-adjacent new tree.

It wasn’t as easy as it sounds. I didn’t want a pre-lit tree, which limited my options. I found a couple trees online that met my eligibility requirements, but I couldn’t really tell anything about them because they were, you know, online. I made several trips to five local stores before I finally said, “Expletive it!” and bought a fancy-adjacent tree whose price was drastically reduced. That last part made the process a tad easier.

And it is a good-looking tree. A good-looking tall tree. It’s so tall it could be the National Christmas Tree. It’s so tall I have to stand in the back yard to get all of it in a photo. It’s so tall I considered renting a cherry picker so I could decorate the top branches.

Okay, maybe it’s not that tall. But I did have to drag out the step ladder to reach those top branches. The good news is that decorating the tree qualified as my daily workout.

Now that I’ve made this admission, I’m going to forget all about climbing the ladder and shaping the branches. That way, I’ll want to decorate that tall tree again next year.

This post originally appeared in the Appalachian News-Express.

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