{"id":6850,"date":"2011-12-06T10:38:36","date_gmt":"2011-12-06T16:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flovalleynews.com\/?p=6850"},"modified":"2011-12-06T10:38:36","modified_gmt":"2011-12-06T16:38:36","slug":"tom-anselm-struggles-with-choice-fake-or-real-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flovalleynews.com\/?p=6850","title":{"rendered":"Tom Anselm struggles with choice: Fake or Real Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boomer’s Journal:<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by Tom Anselm<\/p>\n

Fake Tree or Real Tree\u2026 <\/strong><\/p>\n

That’s the Yuletide Question<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>It\u2019s less than a month before Christmas and I am a bit behind on the house d\u00e9cor. The lovely Jill handles the inside trimming, but it\u2019s up to me to drape gutter and post with lights and roping. So slip and slide along the roof tiles I will go, any day now.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m actually feeling the need to<\/p>\n

jazz it up a bit this season, away<\/p>\n

from the all-white theme of<\/p>\n

yesteryear. You know, bust out for<\/p>\n

some of them big, olden days bulbs<\/p>\n

of yellow and green and red. And<\/p>\n

for an even stranger reason, I have been rethinking the artificial tree as well. Yeah, it sure is easy, and safe, and doesn\u2019t gum up the old OrickXL. But the perfect symmetry is getting boring.<\/p>\n

I know the reasons for faking it were sound when we made the decision, especially given the two-straight years of midnight crashes in the family room and a shrub so out of whack I had to fishing-line-tether it to the baseboards just to make it to Christmas Eve. And it certainly doesn\u2019t have anything to do with pressure from a few of the older ones of our gang who look down their noses at our artificiality. It just seems somehow right, this year above all others, to get real.<\/p>\n

Jill comes from a long line of real-tree freaks. Her oldest brother Jack is a graduate of \u00a0\u201cThe Clark Griswold School of Christmas Tree Selection\u201d, with his firs needing their own zip code, and having to be chopped at the top such that if he didn\u2019t, you could go into his attic and expect to find three feet of greenery sprouting through the ceiling.<\/p>\n

Spouse and I have been mulling over this return to basics, the expense, the need for a change, and oh, yeah, did I mention the expense? So the jury is still out. But I have a feeling she is yearning for a return to the green.<\/p>\n

As a kid in the \u201850s and \u201860s, I always had a smaller version of Old Tannenbaum. Then plastics became the god of the times, and we went to a white tree, with all blue lights. It was a bit sad, really. But mom thought it was pretty, blue being her favorite color, and good old dad couldn\u2019t have given two shakes about the whole thing. And do you remember those aluminum jobs with the revolving colored light wheel at the base? Yeah, well, at least we never had that lame-o thing. (At least I don\u2019t think we did.)<\/p>\n

In our first apartment at Lucas-Hunt Village, Jill and I put up a Charlie Brown-ish little shrub. It was the perfect fit for our space. Of course, her brothers made fun of it. And as the years and the kids came along, and we were able to scrape up the cash, it was off to the Florissant Jaycees lot by Kmart on Lindbergh in search of the perfect tree. Which we never found. Because when we came home and gazed at the terminally-scoliosised bush, the question was, \u201cHey,Tom\u2026 how come it looked so straight at the lot?\u201d<\/p>\n

In those days, it was such a magical event to trim the tree and have hot chocolate and put on the ornaments the kids made at school. Listening to Andy Williams or the Osmond Brothers and even the Oak Ridge Boys Christmas albums, as mom carefully unwrapped the ornaments from Grandma\u2026 great times, friends. We even got through a few years without bloodshed over whose ornament got front-of-the-tree billing.<\/p>\n

Today, not so much. Joanie is the only one still home, and she is busier than a WalMart greeter on Black Friday. So I set up the synthetic replica while watching good old Clark and his Cousin Eddie mangle the holiday, and Jill and I do the honors of ornaments that evening. Which is why we may just go retro this Yuletide. New lights outside and in. A Douglas fir to grace the hearth. A new spirit throughout. But if we do, to paraphrase the police chief in \u201cJaws\u201d when he first saw the Great White\u2026\u201cWe\u2019re gonna need a bigger tree stand.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boomer’s Journal: by Tom Anselm Fake Tree or Real Tree\u2026 That’s the Yuletide Question \u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s less than a month before Christmas and I am a bit behind on the house d\u00e9cor. The lovely Jill handles the inside trimming, but it\u2019s up to me to drape gutter and post with lights and roping. So slip […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columnists","entry"],"yoast_head":"\nTom Anselm struggles with choice: Fake or Real Tree - flovalleynews.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/flovalleynews.com\/?p=6850\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tom Anselm struggles with choice: Fake or Real Tree - flovalleynews.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Boomer’s Journal: by Tom Anselm Fake Tree or Real Tree\u2026 That’s the Yuletide Question \u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s less than a month before Christmas and I am a bit behind on the house d\u00e9cor. 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