Can you guess what we did tonight?

A Christmas at Gma and Gpa Higbee's 2006

Tonight, we decorated the Christmas tree. I spent hours in preparation. The children acted like delinquents. Susannah decided that today was the perfect day to get up on her knees and start scooting over to that tree. Joe and I struggled to keep it together. And I had a flashback. To my childhood. When every year, we would go up in the Mountains to get our family Christmas tree. And we siblings would pray that mom and dad would not split up.

A favorite Chaffin Christmas. I'm thinking 84?

Arguments over the family Christmas tree are famous in our history. My parents would begin debating next year’s tree in January. Arguments often became so heated, that after a few years, my parents decided to rotate who got to pick the family tree, with my dad getting to pick roughly one out of three years. Every year, the entire family would trek into the mountains in search of the perfect tree. We would hike for miles, each of us pointing out dozens of lovely trees that always fell short of my mother’s expectations. And then after hours of searching and miles away from the truck, my mom would find it. My mom preferred trees with distinctive features like mistletoe or lots of pinecones, or a small family of squirrels.

The relief of finally finding the tree was always short lived, because it was immediately followed by some disaster, a small child rolling down the mountain, the realization that we left the saw in the car, or some other similar catastrophe.

If finding the tree was difficult, loading it on the car and setting it up in the house was grueling. Our family could tell stories for hours of the doors that had to be removed from hinges, trees that broke 3 tree stands in one night, trees that had to be wired to the ceiling or have extra branches wired into the trunk.

Despite the fact that there were tears, lots of bickering, and the occasional profanity, this was considered family bonding and attendance was required by every member. Every year this was how my family would begin the Christmas Season. Those were good times. Yesterday, Mom posted that she and dad picked up their tree at Home Depot.