1. We pull into the lot and I reach into the back seat and unbuckle Trey.
2. Suddenly infused with the powers of a spider monkey, Trey leaps forward out of his car seat and latches onto my back with a strength of grip that no Earthly toddler should naturally possess.
3. I manage to open my door and exit the vehicle by leaning forward and hunching over until I resemble Quasimodo with a Trey-shaped hump on my back.
4. Trey slides down my side while somehow managing to also do some sort of toe-assisted triple lutz jump once he reaches my knees.
5. Trey lands on the ground, looks up at me and giggles. He then turns, points at the nearest Christmas tree and, shouting something incomprehensible, he disappears into the festive foliage.
6. There is much running and chasing and giggling as Brittany slowly meanders out of the car, walks up to the first tree she sees and claims it as her own. Some time later, I locate a tree about fifty times too large for our house, and Brittany informs me that it’s too big. I ignore her. She then spreads her arms in a wide display of behemothic girth in an effort to plainly illustrate just how egregiously large the tree I’ve found is, then tells me that she’s already found a tree that will fit perfectly, and advises me I would do well to fall it love with it, myself. She then points back towards that first tree she found, and I see that she is right. It is perfect and she found it. However, I pretend to ignore this fact and arrogantly claim discovery of the tree in the name of my people.
7. We “chop” the tree down by picking it up out of its stand. Trey is amazed by this.
8. We saw an inch off the trunk. Trey continues to be impressed with my logging acumen.
9. We carry the tree back to my car, then watch with trepidation and wonder as a man who seems to have a face made almost entirely of forehead attempts to lead a small army of clueless subordinates by waving a half-eaten barbeque sandwich at them while trying to explain the mysterious science of using twine to tie the tree to the roof of my car. They mostly succeed, kind of. We think. We hope.
10. We drive home, slowly. Very slowly.

We spent the rest of the afternoon bringing the tree inside and decorating it with several hundred lights of an increasingly festive variety. In my befuddled past, I did my best to accommodate the lunatic sensibilities of my image-obsessed ex-wife and endeavoured to provide her with an elegant, party-ready Christmas tree complete with a unified theme and mood lighting. Now that I’m a parent, however, I don’t do themed trees, nor do I think any parent should. Meticulously decorated trees adhering to a unifying aesthetic of one central theme are very pretty to look at, but they don’t belong in the homes of parents. Such soulless intricacies are for single people or childless couples looking to impress friends through the artifice of their own mass-produced creation, or simply for vapid families devoid of love and creativity. No, when a child is present, a Christmas tree should be a rather ghastly sort of creation, the strange and delightful Frankensteinian result of the confusing and often wondrous way that a child views the world. There should be placed upon its branches a fierce and defiant hodgepodge of ornamental decoration that reflects the interests and traditions of every member of the family, from all stages of their lives and with a complete disregard for cohesive thought. It should, it other words, be fun!

A true family Christmas tree has a collection of ornaments such as the partially-broken clay hand sculptures from kindergarten mingled in with the curious little ornament that looks like an antediluvian lantern filled with something that might have once been candy but has since melted, congealed, and then melted again so many times that it now looks and smells like unrefined crude oil mixed with a hint of pine-fresh urinal cake. The homemade ornaments mix with the store-bought ones, the relevance of most long since lost on the winds of time and fading memory until you can no longer remember why you ever had an ornament shaped like a giant peanut hanging on your Christmas tree to begin with. The whole thing should scream ‘Family!’ by highlighting just how eclectic and weird all families truly are, and any parent with a delicately trimmed tree is either lying to the world with every insincere ornament they purposefully hang upon its branches, or they’re simply delusional. Either way, they are more concerned with image than with substance. You know…phonies.

Trey fell asleep early last night, after his weekend of excitement. We’d spent the day before at his cousin’s birthday party, where Trey was able to climb and jump and fall “Like Wezio!” all day long, and Sunday’s excitement of the Christmas tree proved too much to bear. He was running on fumes by seven o’clock and out like a light before eight. He eventually woke up sometime later though, just before Brittany and I climbed into bed. He wanted a drink and we’d promised to watch a Christmas movie, so Brittany set about finding something appropriately short on Netflix. Unfortunately, what she chose was a little straight-to-video cartoon from 1997 that was animated with a budget of five dollars and a sackful of idiocy. It was called The Littlest Angel and it consumed twenty-five minutes of my life I’ll not get back in a hurry. It made Brittany cry by pulling on her Mom-centric heartstrings, though – but I think I’ll save the details of that insidious development of misguided holiday cheer for Thursday’s essay. Cheers!