the $17.96 christmas tree
This weekend we put up a Christmas tree in my studio. I'm a real Christmas tree fanatic, but for my office I wanted to use our old fake one from the first year we were married so I wasn't constantly cleaning up fallen needles and forgetting to water it.
So on Saturday, we went to my studio, and while I unpackaged and sorted 28 clients' orders, Mark and the boys put up the tree. It was smaller and more pathetic looking than I remember, but it was nostalgia in a box. Still on the box was the bright green price tag from Wal-Mart, circa 1996. $17.96. A description is probably not necessary... you can imagine the quality you'd get for eighteen bucks. A tree that would make Charlie Brown proud, scrawny and short, and in some serious need of fluffing up.
We were so poor those first few Christmases. The funny thing is, I didn't enjoy Christmas any less. All these years later, with kids and all of the focus on material things, it is good to remember that sad little tree, our economical choice. We paid for our entire Christmas those years with the checks that Mark's parents and my grandparents would send.... and we felt so rich!
So there the little tree is, in the corner of my very cute studio. It still needs more ornaments, but it is beautiful in its own way. A reminder of what really matters, and what really doesn't:-)
So on Saturday, we went to my studio, and while I unpackaged and sorted 28 clients' orders, Mark and the boys put up the tree. It was smaller and more pathetic looking than I remember, but it was nostalgia in a box. Still on the box was the bright green price tag from Wal-Mart, circa 1996. $17.96. A description is probably not necessary... you can imagine the quality you'd get for eighteen bucks. A tree that would make Charlie Brown proud, scrawny and short, and in some serious need of fluffing up.
We were so poor those first few Christmases. The funny thing is, I didn't enjoy Christmas any less. All these years later, with kids and all of the focus on material things, it is good to remember that sad little tree, our economical choice. We paid for our entire Christmas those years with the checks that Mark's parents and my grandparents would send.... and we felt so rich!
So there the little tree is, in the corner of my very cute studio. It still needs more ornaments, but it is beautiful in its own way. A reminder of what really matters, and what really doesn't:-)
posted by gretchen at 12/10/2007 10:41:00 PM
2 Comments:
HOLY CRAP. 23 orders is insane...
We must have bought that same tree a year later. I remember thinking at the time that it was a beautiful tree, in part because of the scrimping and saving that went into affording that $17.96 tree ;) Boy, have we come a long way!
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