Why NOT to Buy Your Christmas Tree at Walmart

Val got it into her head that she wanted to donate a tree for the Methuen festival of lights, so I looked up the number for her and she called and talked to the people in charge. For those of you non-locals, the Festival of Trees is thrown every year by the town of Methuen. Residents and local businesses all donate elaborately decorated fake trees to compete for cheep paper awards. The real point of the festival is to raffle off the trees to the local residents and visitors. Townies pay something like $5 admission to see all the trees and then they can buy separate raffle tickets to put in the appropriate bags of the trees they hope to win. It's a huge fund raiser for the Methuen historic society and normal people start planning and decorating their trees months in advance. So now it's October, and Val has just decided that she has a pressing need to donate a tree for this year. Its not that she hasn't talked about it before, but there is a big difference between talking and doing. So Val called the people at the historical society and told them she wants to do a tree. Well, they signed her up..... and then told her that the tree is due in 3 weeks!

So, we start on the tree. Val choose the theme 'Tiny Bubbles' because she already had some bubble lights and we figured it wouldn't be terribly hard. She also had a bunch of extra lights that she bought on sale last year.

Next we needed a tree. Walmart is the only store that has started putting their trees out so crazy early (it's October people, OCTOBER!), so we headed off to buy a fake tree. It was about 9:30 and the 24 hour Walmart was a half hour away. So we got into my bug and off we went.

We picked out an $80 tree, so it definitely wasn't a cheep one, and then we went back to Val's house to start stringing the lights.  First, we wrapped 3 strands of larger bulb lights around the pole. Next we put all the branches on and started wrapping normal small lights and little ball lights around them. I believe we were on strand 7 when the tree FELL OVER.....

Ok, technically, it didn't fall over. The cheep crappy plastic stand was still sitting firmly on the ground with the metal bar of the tree still planted firmly in it. Only the tree was HORIZONTAL! The metal pole bent. Seriously, it bent into a nice 'L' shape under the crushing weight of 7 strands of Christmas lights (that's sarcasm). Thank goodness it wasn't decorated, or worse yet already on display! I could just see the headline now 'Local resident builds tree that falls on orphans".......

The moral of this story is 'Don't buy your tree at Walmart'. They have crappy trees, and we paid $80 for our crappy tree. Did I mention that IT FELL OVER?

We now have a sideways, broken tree and we'd just spend roughly 3 hours intricately twisting lights onto it. The tree sparkled, both inside and out. It looked fabulous! What to do now? We could take the tree back, but that would mean removing the lights, packing it back up, and driving and hour round trip back to Walmart. Oh, and did I mention that it's now roughly 1:30AM?!?

So, we went into the den and we plotted and debated our plight. Then we decided that our sideways tree would remain just that, sideways. It's going to be a cornucopia. You know, that horn looking thing that comes out for Thanksgiving. Val is going to make some large fruit out of foam so it can look like its spilling out. Don't bother trying to form a mental picture...I'll take one and post it.

Oh, and for those of you wondering, when a tree falls in your living room, it does make a sound. It starts with a 'F' and it isn't FWUMP!