When is the most appropriate time to put up a Christmas tree?
The experts say that there is six different ways to fold a bathroom towel and it’s likely if you ask the same number of people, they may give you each a different answer to when to put up a Christmas tree. This age old debate came up during a group conversation today and every single person had a different answer to when they find it appropriate to put up their evergreens. Apparently within the group of about eight people, one thought that the tree goes up the day after Halloween, the majority said anytime after Thanksgiving and one said that they never put up the tree before the beginning of December. As one can imagine, there were some strong opinions for the person who decided that on November 1st they were putting up their tree on display especially when some of us still had our pumpkins outside. Just when I thought that the date was the great debate on the trees, I was definitely wrong.
Then there were the lights, oh those lights. White, blue, multi-color and just as important: blinking, dimming or steady. You would have thought the conversation would have stopped there, but then we crossed into dangerous territory of fake or real trees. If you buy fake trees, do you stop at one or do you buy more? Apparently there are different names of these trees and it is also noteworthy to know what height your trees are too. Those who made the decision to buy real ones, did you cut your own or did someone cut it for you? Just like there are types of towel folding, there are almost the same number of different types of evergreen trees. This discussion was becoming too much and too deep for me considering that Halloween was just a week ago.
When I thought the conversation was over, then someone mentioned themes of trees. You can have candy cane, silver, gold and many other types of themes. That was certainly my turn to excuse myself, after all, I have enough homemade ornaments and those from a certain greeting card store to cover two fake eight foot tall trees if I wanted to. However, I am pleased with the one I have that dim from white to pastel colors. We will eventually go back to real trees, but we are perfectly content with the tree we have for now.
So when is the best time for putting up the tree? It depends on the eye of the beholder. I am not a big fan before Thanksgiving for the tree, but ultimately it is usually when Daddy caves in to the girls’ request. After all, the tree is a big deal to them!
