Christmas Tree

There was a time when I vowed NEVER to own an artificial Christmas tree. We were "all natural". Some years I cut our tree from a designated area, and others I cut one from places that were, well, undesignated. I remember one such tree I cut from a training area on Fort Leonard Wood. It was, unfortunately, a cedar tree, and while it looked really good, it's weak stemmed limbs could not support even our lightest ornaments, so when it was all decorated, everything looked sort of droopy. My wife declared it a total failure. So, as I recall, I was ordered to the PX parking lot to buy a replacement. It was after we retired from active duty that we made the switch to artificial. We hauled that "boxed" tree around from homes in Virginia, then North Carolina, then back to Virginia. Last year I noticed that the metal limbs which had to be individually inserted in the tree's center metal pole were pretty well bent up (our two cats had climbed the tree the year prior and you can imagine the result). The other thing I noted last year was how much I hated to string strand after strand of lights, around and around, and then working for hours afterwards to get them all balanced out. You probably know the drill. So, last week, my wife and I went to Lowes and bought a new artificial tree, one with lights already installed, and with limbs that were fully connected. It took me less than a hour to get it up and looking great. Yesterday, I hung the outside ornaments, and last night we were looking a lot like Christmas. But, the center of it all remains the tree, albeit an artificial one.