The Tree

Who doesn't love their Christmas tree?  Each year, everyone we know has such fun traditions of getting the tree, when they get their tree, how it is decorated, and so on.  We don't typically have any tradition that would lock us into a timeframe...it might be said that I am bad with being on time or doing anything in a timely fashion...but our one big tradition is to rotate who puts the star on each year.  Squeaks was finally old enough to get her turn in the rotation. 


After the star is on, the decorating begins.  This year, the ornaments suffered more casualties than ever before.  I have learned to expect this each year and try not to get too attached to anything I don't want to see shattered on the carpet.  I also try to get only softie ornaments that will survive the harshness of eager holiday hands.  At the beginning of the season, I couldn't quite figure out why all the ornaments were taking such a beating....

...it certainly wasn't from the dogs.  After the "Huck you be the X-mas tree and wear this skirt" incident, both dogs preferred be as far away from the tree as possible...Huck didn't seem to mind too much and I think I even heard Callie asking if she, too, could pretty please have a X-mas skirt blanket.  But once it belonged to the tree, they had nothing more to do with it.




In time, I started to notice that other creatures were lurking around the tree who might be responsible for the ornament destruction.  In fact, our tree took on a whole new life to these creatures.  They started simply with building little reading nooks, complete with a pillow and a pile of books near the tree.  After all, Christmas tree lights are superb for reading up on squids and model railroads.  It then increased to two little cave-like areas for the creatures now with blankets, stuffed animals, and more pillows to make their quarters comfortable.  Soon the books needed a place to stay, so the limbs became bookshelves with magazines and books shoved in amongst the ornaments.  This wasn't enough, though.  While reading, of course one needs to have their numerous stuffed squids nearby and so the tree became an unusual habitat for several stuffed squids.  Not to be outdone, a few stuffed kittens were added as well.  Needless to say, the tree just had enough of this not-being-treated-like-a-tree business and fell over as the ornament gods called a few more ornaments back home.  I only discovered the book-shelf and stuffed-animal-humane-society functions of the tree once it had fallen over.   Much to-do was made over trees being trees and not bookcases....trees not being suitable for stuffed animals once inside, though perhaps living animals outside while still planted.  The pine needles and chunks of ornaments made happy-rattling noises once the vacuum cleaner sucked them up.  I think I actually heard the tree release a sigh of relief once the lights and ornaments had been removed at the end of the season and it was placed back outside.  It was safer out there than it was in here.  Next year, I am just putting lights on the tree and perhaps a perimeter of some sort to keep the little creatures away.