Christmas Trees Take on a Life of Their Own

We insist on bringing them into our homes. We give them water and dress them well. They die anyway.

Eventually, Christmas trees will all rise up, as if in a Stephen King novel, rise up and revolt. In many homes, they already have.

Readers submitted hundreds of Christmas tree war stories since last week. Here are a few favorites:

Random Acts of Heroism

We examine the tree real careful. You see, I am an RN so I notice things like branch deformities, needle fungus, dry trunk syndrome. And hubby’s an engineer, so he notices angles, shape, electrical current potential, stuff like that.

Anyway, we finally decide on a tree, and usually it’s big, like 9 feet, because we have high ceilings. We shove the tree into the minivan, and home we go.

Then the music starts.

“Help me with this #*$#@$#!# tree, would ya?” my charming husband says.

“Why didn’t we move the $#!&*&% couch?” he asks.

“Moron,” I say to myself.

Against all odds, we make it inside the house.

“Why can’t you just hold the #$@!&*%! tree straight?” he says, cussing constantly now.

“That’s it, I’ve had it,” I say and start to leave, the tree starts to fall and he gets real nice.

And so back to the tree I go, steady now I hold it for all I’m worth. As I look down between noble fir branches at his posterior high in the air, his head lost to the trunk, I giggle to myself because if ever there was a picture of a moron, this one should be framed.

So you say, what’s so unusual about this story? Well, we’ve been doing this same fight for 13 years and we’d never have it any other way. Truth is, I think he rather likes being the moron under the tree.

--ELIZABETH C.

Aliso Viejo

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Chain Saws and In-Laws

My wife and I were at my house, when we get a rather strange phone call from my father-in-law that he needed some help with the tree and could I bring my chain saw.

You can imagine my surprise when upon our arrival I discover that the tree is already in the house and clearly several feet too long.

The request that came next still amuses us to this day. I was asked to fire up the chain saw in the middle of the living room to trim this enormous tree.

As you can imagine, I asked if we should consider trying to move the tree back outside, but they were adamant that it was too big to get back outside.

So I proceed to chop off roughly 4 to 5 feet of tree, while my poor father-in-law gets handed the riot act for buying too large a tree, even though he tried to suggest this “perfect” tree was too large.

As it happens, this monster Christmas tree had a huge trunk on it, even after being trimmed, so we proceeded to completely destroy two standard stands with this hulk of a tree.

Not to be deterred, my father-in-law, who is an engineer, and I designed and built a custom tree stand that was up to the challenge of this killer tree.

This was the Tim Allen of tree stands. It had a 4- to 5-foot square base, guide wires galore; it was wonderful!

Amazingly, no divorces resulted from this fiasco, [though] it eventually led to a permanent ban on live Christmas trees in the house.

--MICHAEL S.

Placentia

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The Owl and the Flying Eggnog

There was a time in the early years of our marriage when my dear wife, Alice, and I were determined to be original, artsy and nontraditional in our approach to life.

To be as nontraditional as possible, we eschewed the cliche of a boring evergreen fir-type tree and hauled in from our patio a potted 6-foot living ficus and festooned it with twinkly lights and great gobs of tinsel.

Another manifestation of our yen to be different was seen in our choice of pets. We had a small South American owl named Bruno who flew freely about the house.

He (or she--who could tell with an owl?) was quite tame and friendly and would swoop silently down and land on my arm. He (or she) was quite pleased with the introduction of the ficus. A real tree!

Now the plot thickens: a holiday open house. Friends and neighbors trekking in and out, merrily wassailing.

One new neighbor lady opted to sit by the tree with her mug of eggnog and plate of canapes.

At that very moment, Bruno decided to swoop from his place of concealment in the tree and, bedecked with the odd bit of tinsel, swoop he did right onto the lady’s arm.

The ensuing imbroglio included flying canapes, splattering eggnog, screaming lady, fluttering owl, crashing plate, smashing mug and--as a dramatic finale--exiting via the front door, and still screaming, the lady.

With a generous dispensing of eggnog and mulled wine, the party survived into the wee hours.

--WALTER H.

Santa Barbara

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And Finally . . .

A thousand years ago in the winter woods of Ohio, [my father] ventured us to the farmer’s forest to cut down our tree.

I remember huddling in the car, warmly wrapped in my snow-suit as only a mother can wrap you, sharing the excitement with my little brother in the quickly fading light of the winter afternoon.

My father claims he paid under $5 for that tree. The farmer really made his money by hooking up his tractor and charging to pull his customers’ cars out of the snowbank.

Later at home, it was discovered the base of the tree was too short to fit in the stand. My 2-year-old brother and I assisted while my father attempted to saw off the bottom branches. We jumped around and over the horizontal tree with Christmas glee while my father, though young then, grunted and groaned with the effort. I still remember the smell of the newly cut pine.

But without its bottom branches, the whole tree sort of fell apart and appeared more of a bush. My father hit a tree lot in downtown North Canton and for about $1.50 brought home a replacement on Christmas Eve.

Maybe some trees misbehave so we’ll remember.

--KATHIE G.

Pacific Palisades

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Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.