Cthulhu’s own Christmas Tree

Once upon a time, the R. family used to go select and cut down a fresh Christmas tree each December. Somewhere, there are pictures of Sweet Daughter at 3 months old sitting in her car carrier next to our intended victim harvest.

The first year she became mobile, all I had time to do was cut it down, put it up where it wasn’t accessible and throw a single strand of lights around the top 2 feet of it. We no longer had the leisure time to go hunt down and harvest the tree, and then actually get it home and decorated. So I came up with the great idea of getting a pre-lit artificial one. We’d save time! We’d save money in the long run! Shorter Half wouldn’t be allergic to the fake one! No needles to vacuum up for the next 6 months! The risk of fire would go way down! We couldn’t forget to water it! We could get one with those new-fangled LED lights and save money on our electric bill!

So I did my research, and waited for them to go on sale. I selected a lovely tree. It had realistic artificial tips. It was pre-lit in a rainbow of colors. It had those dam#ed LED lights. I got it home, put it up and found out the lights didn’t twinkle, they seethed. There was something about the blue ones (and to some extent the green and purple ones) that sucked the very soul from my body. Looking directly at them was like being in the presence of my dementor. Even the red and gold ones seemed bitter. Nothing warm and cozy and joyous about this tree – you could almost hear it hiss at you as you walked by. If Cthulhu had a Christmas tree, this was it.

So while Shorter Half is marching in a Christmas Parade tomorrow with his WWII unit, Sweet Daughter and I will be looking for a reasonably inexpensive, bright, warm and twinkly pre-lit tree. And Cthulhu’s tree can sit in storage and seethe. The only question now is all white, or multi-color?