DIY Christmas Tree Vendetta
Dec 8th, 2008 by Moshe
When I was 10, my parents moved to a small village in the countryside. The weather was awful, the food was even worse (apparently, there is a very logical explanation for why you’ve never heard the words British and gourmet in the same sentence), and the kids were downright mean.
I hated our house, my parents, the clouded sky and the darned sheep that seemed to be everywhere you turned – it was like there were following me, conspiring against me. I was as sad and betrayed as every ten-year-old city boy that has been removed from everything he’d ever enjoyed and knew could be. I wish it was like a Disney story, where I discovered a friendly dragon living in a cave, and befriended him, and then we need to hide him from the local police, but they catch him, and me and the girl whom I’m secretly in love with release him to fly to the stars, and even the cold-hearted Police captain, when he sees we believe in magic, suddenly remembers himself as a little boy and orders his men to put down their weapons, and we all look up to the sky and see him disappearing, turning into a star while I shout “Fly burninator! Fly to the stars!”
Alas, that just wasn’t the case. It was a boring place, with boring kids, and I left it the minute I graduated high school, not a moment too soon. But every cloud has a silver lining. Every November 5th, the British celebrate a very educational holiday called Guy Fawkes Night, when they let the kids go off to start fires and play with firecrackers until dawn (while they feast on a fine example of the British cuisine, the groaty pudding). Sure enough, every 5th of November, our bonfire was the biggest in the village.
To make a long story short, one of these years I stole my father’s chainsaw and went to the nearby forest, where my friends and I had the greatest bonfire this village has ever seen since the Black Plague, and felt very good about ourselves. That’s until the cops came to have a little chat with my parents.
Apparently, I chopped down the entire humble Christmas tree plantation that supplied Christmas trees to our village and the surrounding towns. In my defense I can only say I was a city kid, and hey, it looked like a forest to me. It was a sad Christmas in the village, plastic trees in every home. It took me two summers to pay for the damage in work. I learned a lot about how to pick the right tree, and how it is actually more ecological to use a live one than to purchase plastic trees.
So if you too want get yourself a live tree for this Christmas, the Green House is here to the rescue with an excellent video on how to get one.
Happy holidays!
That’s one sad story. Can I has burninator?