I grew up in a strictly real tree household. Our family would
bundle up, walk to the snowy tree lot several blocks away, and trundle home with a new tree on our shoulders. It was all very Dickensian. We would look down on pathetic plastic trees and their owners, whom we thought must be very unhappy people indeed.
As an adult, I continued the fresh tree tradition. But year after year, the dissonance of having a real tree wore on me, aware of the wastefulness of it all. This year, I couldn't take it anymore. So we bundled up and drove to the strip mall several exits away to get a fake tree of our very own.
We found a convincing looking tree in stock at Target. Surprising from a merchandising perspective was Target's effort to make it easy to match the trees on display with their corresponding boxes. Rather than naming the trees with model names or descriptions, they simply assigned a number to each tree model, one through twenty-four. What was unusual about this was that the numbers weren't stickers; they were designed into the box labels despite the tree coming from several manufacturers. I guess Target has enough market power to demand such things from its suppliers.
We bought tree number seventeen.
We have a household motto, "Happiness through gadgetry," and a tradition of honoring our gadgets by naming them. In prior years we knew our relationship with our real trees was not going to last and we avoided getting too close. But since our new tree will be around long enough for us to bond with, we had to find a name for it.
But what do you name a tree that is plastic? A cold, post-modern simulation of something beautiful and organic?
Welcome, Seventeen!
(We are in the midst of writing an ode, to the tune of Oh Tanenbaum, but have gotten only as far as the first line.)
Seventeen looks pretty good. Perfect size, too-perfect shape. Not too much needle spillage. We wore gloves while piecing together his/her PVC branches, so neither of us has contracted cancer or lead poisoning.
All we need now is a couple of pine-scented of air fresheners as ornaments to complete the experience olfactorily.
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