Christmas By Numbers

Don't look now, but Christmas is practically upon us once again. You know what that means... Getting out all the decorations, knick-knacks, untangling lights, moving furniture, re-arranging spaces and putting the Christmas tree together. It's a process in my household. It began several days ago and will end, well, sometime prior to Christmas itself.

I have a process for everything from loading the dishwasher to putting up tree lights after the holidays. I call it extreme attention to detail. My wife and son call it... Never mind what they call it. However, she has admitted that my tree light system is clean, neat and efficient and makes stringing it on the tree much easier. I've even gone so far as to custom design the insides of three plastic tubs, compartmentalizing them to make for easier ornament putting away, storage and so forth.

One of the biggest challenges came when we switched from real to fake trees for Christmas. It seems my son is allergic to Evergreen trees. My parents gave us a nice one one year, and we used it for several years. About five years ago my wife's mother gave us her old tree which is nearly eight feet tall and as big around as a VW Beetle.

Don't get me wrong, I like the tree. I wouldn't have used it for the past five or six years if I didn't. However, the first Christmas I put the tree up was one to remember. It wasn't the gifts or the music or the great holiday cheer that made it memorable. It was the tree.

My wife decided what day the tree would be put up. Coincidentally, she was out shopping on said day. All day. This phone conversation took place approximately 45 minutes after her departure.

"Hi honey," I said. "Where are the directions on the tree your mom gave us? There are none? Okay... Well, is it color coded or something? Umm... No, I don't see any colors on the branch bases. You're right. How do you know what goes where? Ha ha... (Jokingly)Perhaps I'll just get out my handy-dandy tape measure and measure each branch as I put them on largest to smallest from the bottom to the top."

Half an hour later, I had four branches on one tier and was crawling on the floor measuring out branches with my handy-dandy tape measure. Flash forward past some of the colorful comments I made during the assemblage process and, voila! One 10 hour tree! Please don't ask how long it took to put nearly 20 strands of light onto that Christmas tree.

Regardless, after that holiday season, I announced to my wife and young child that I, Phillip H. Haworth, would not assemble that tree ever again. After some sage advice from my wife, young child and mother-in-law, I announced that I, Phillip H. Haworth, would devise a system to make assembling that crazy tree easier.

Now, each branch has its own special numbering system. Once I get the base of the tree up, it's simply a matter of locating the number at the base of the branch that corresponds to the correct tier. With the remnants of Thanksgiving dinner put away let Christmas by numbers begin!