COLUMN Holt's Harangue

Author: Christian Holt

During holiday break, my family always gets together to go Christmas tree shopping. There, hark! is a tree that is perfect. Perfectly shaped, beautiful branches, and of course, a good three feet taller than our living room ceiling. What a beautiful spirit of Christmas! Now where's that chainsaw?
Trimming the tree was like wrestling a three hundred pound hedgehog. One cannot simply go to the tree and place an ornament. The tree is so large this year that the branches were pushed against three walls of our house. We had to resort to diving underneath the tree and popping up at intervals where the branches were less dense. There upon the beleaguered trimmer could place a single ornament. Thus, trimming the tree starts in Thanksgiving and ends sometime before Memorial Day. Seeing my family trim the tree resembles watching prairie dogs popping up from their holes.
My youngest sister has the most important task. She has to place the star atop the tree. She, being the smallest, has to somehow weave herself between branches and force her way to the base. Upon finding the base, she bravely climbs the trunk. The star clenched between her teeth, she ascends slowly. The result is something that reminds me of one of those twisted dare game shows. Assailing the trimmer are needles, branches, and the worst foe of all: gravity. Gravity may still choose to throw the trimmer down upon the ground. The fall, luckily, is broken by our glass ornaments.
The tree sheds more than a scared shih-tzu. It loses pine needles almost as fast as Anna Nicole Smith loses her dignity... almost. Digging out the presents from the piles of pine needles was an ordeal. Those little buggers are sharp. This is why the eldest hands out the presents in my family. We have the longest reaches, and therefore, will not succumb to the bottomless pine needle moguls that surround the tree.
Little Bobby, my cousin, learned this lesson the hard way. Back in 94, we lost him on Christmas morning when he went frantically searching for his much wished for GI Joe. The pine needles consumed him. We swept out the pine needles a few weeks later, but Bobby was nowhere to be found. So I kept his GI Joe.
Anyway, the tree is so large this year that we've decided not to move it out immediately after the holidays. Nope, we're just going to slowly starve it out. We're waging siege warfare on the evergreen in our living room. Let the thing rot, decay, and dry out. That way, it will be lighter and easier to carry to the curb. Since I'll be away at college, my little sisters should be able to haul the skeleton of the behemoth tree out.
I can only imagine that taking the tree to the curb will resemble a victorious Neanderthal hunting party. Hung over their shoulders, my kin will haul the skeleton of the tree much like our forefathers did to the ancient brachiosaurus. In ancient times, the hunting party would shout celebratory songs at their victory over their prey. In my household, we shout obscenities to our neighbors, who refuse to take down those stupid electrical Santa's.
I think this crazy tree column had a point to it, (point, get it?). If it did, it was probably lost in the needles, along with my cousin. Jeez, I'm on with the corny jokes today. Anyway, check here next week for more uprooted humor (rooted, hahaha!) and sharp-as-a-needle opinions. I swear, no more puns. Really.