A lot of folks enjoy their Christmas Tree’s until New Year’s Day and beyond. Not me. By Christmas day I have had a Tree in my living room for 3 weeks too long. Which would be almost the entire time there’s been a tree in my living room.
I LOVE Christmas. I love going to church at Christmas time, the celebration of my Lord, the family gatherings, the food, the giving, and the twinkling lights. The tree is wonderful, beautiful and smells great. But, the tree is kind-of a pain.
Sorry. I don’t mean to be a scrooge. I have to vacuum up the 10,000 needles it’s shedding. I have to water it. I have to tie it up when it falls over……. again. I have to keep the cat from climbing it. So, on Christmas Day –
Bring on the BURNING OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE!
I am ready to see a show.
This is another tradition that goes way back to my childhood. My dad burned our tree every year. One branch at a time. In our fireplace.
It was such fun. The kids helped clip off the branches. My dad would toss them into the fireplace, and the entire house was toasty and warm. Because the tree is nice and dry at this point, the rate at which it burns is remarkable.
It’s like the 4th of July, on Christmas Day, in the living room.
The branch clipping and toasting goes on for a good portion of the day. Until you are left with this:
A Christmas Tree without branches. Do you see it there in between my husband and my smallest child? It’s there if you look really close. Nothing but the trunk.
Let’s start at the beginning. First we must remove all the candy-canes, ornaments, crafts and snowflakes from the (about to be firewood) tree. As you can see, we don’t have one of those fancy, all the ornaments match and are precisely placed on the branches, perfect Christmas Trees.
We have a little tree with all the ornaments in the middle of the tree (because that’s where the kids can reach), none of the ornaments match each other or anything else in life for that matter. Most of the things hanging from our tree were made by 6,7,and 8 year olds.
It’s a disaster, it’s a mess, I love it.
My youngest child found him a good spot! This is where the ornaments should go. Right here. No where else. Yes-sir-ee.
Now, I made the mistake of had so much fun teaching my 4 children how to make snowflakes with printer paper. Unfortunately, we have a lot of printer paper. Also unfortunately, my 2 youngest have a lot of time and energy on their hands. They spent most of December turning a ream of printer paper into snowflakes.
And sprinkling our house in little bits of leftover snowflake scraps. It was like it snowed paper ……. everywhere.
It’s time to take the lights off. At this point there are 100 pine needles in my boots.
For several years, we clipped off the branches one at a time and tossed them into our fireplace. When the walls on the second floor of our house began to get hot, we decided to try a different route.
Since, we don’t want to burn down our house on Christmas, this year we went with the drag -it-outside-and-torch-it-method.
Let’s get this party started!
Going….
Going…
Going……
and going……
Gone!
That’s one way to take down a tree.
Merry Christmas!
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