Last Christmas You Gave Me Your Heart; The Very Next Day I Gave It Away

I've had some questions on the Christmas tree.

Tyler and I are approaching our seventh Christmas as a married couple. There are a couple of unresolved differences in our marriage. I would like him to eat wheat bread. He'd like me to leave him alone about the white bread. I'd like him to care just a little bit less about football (I know, that's blasphemous). He'd like me to be grateful he's not into baseball.

And most importantly right now, I'd like a real Christmas tree. Tyler would like a fake one.

Last year when we were poor teachers, I caved and we borrowed a fake tree. It was fine and I was grateful we had any tree at all, even though faking a tree is kind of like faking Christmas. This year we are wealthy teachers, and I knew that we were back to piney business as usual. Tyler, however, took last year as a precedent and assumed we were buying our own artificial holiday.

Our conversation sounded a bit like a father and a daughter when the daughter desperately wants a puppy (a conversation I happen to remember a lot about).

"But we kill it every year."
"I won't this year, I promise. I'll water it and love it and take it on a walk everyday."
"It will be a fire hazard."
"It won't. I promise, promise, promise."

Tyler's infallible logic was working until I whipped up a fresh batch of tears.

We bought a real tree.

And, as a note to anyone who comments on this, if you try to tell me how much more practical fake trees are, I wish you a lump of coal in your stocking.

This weekend we also pulled out the Christmas playlist, and I have, for your reading pleasure, my top best and worst Christmas songs.

BEST:
5. "Oh Savior Thou Who Wearest a Crown of Piercing Thorns." It's in the hymn book. Apparently 15 years long friends are picky about how this is an Easter song. Fine. I change this one to "Coventry Carol."
4. "Baby It's Cold Outside." I'm kind of partial to the Ella Fitzgerald version.
3. Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLaughlan sing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings."
2. Jack Johnson sings "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer."
1. Mannheim Steamroller doing "Silent Night." Whatever happened to those guys?

WORST:
4. "Oh Holy Night." Any version. Except maybe the version Denise Williams sings during the church Christmas meeting.
3. Neil Diamond sings anything Christmas. This probably has more to do with my general disdain for Neil Diamond, a disdain Tyler calls un-American.
2. Michael McLean's Forgotten Carols. I'm sorry; I'm sure it's a Christmas tradition in your family. But go listen to "I Cry the Day That I Take the Tree Down" and then tell me with a straight face that it belongs with the likes of Bing Crosby and Karen Carpenter.

And finally, the number one worst Christmas song:

1. John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Happy Christmas." Bleh. Somehow worse in Portuguese.