Tradition

Winston Churchill once said that British naval tradition amounted to "rum, sodomy, and the lash." I have no way of knowing whether he was right or wrong, but traditions are a funny thing.

At the Flying W household, it has become traditional to get our Christmas tree on a Friday evening in early December. The preferred venue for this activity is the local Home Depot. They have the noble firs that Katy and I both prefer, their prices are excellent, and we've always gotten nice fresh trees there.

I bring my work gloves and a utility knife - if I remember. (This year I did not.) Wading back into the stacks of six to seven foot noble firs, I look for a promising tree top. When I find one, I haul it out to the aisle and unwrap it so Katy can appraise it. Once we find a good one, we set it aside and look for a better one.

We mentioned to a couple neighbors that we got our tree at Home Depot. The looks ranged from amusement to absolute horror. Apparently this tradition places us firmly in the camp of the Tree Philistines - Real Families go and cut their own trees down. But here's the thing - if you go to cut your tree down around here, it's a tree that was planted for that purpose - in nice neat little rows, as likely as not on a Southern California Edison power line easement. It's just as artificial an environment for those trees as the parking lot of a home improvement center.

Anyway, it took me all day Saturday and part of Sunday to get the lights on the tree. Sometime this week I'll post the whole story of that particular odyssey.