We have a new Christmas tree. Wait, don’t worry! I am not going to make you nauseous like I did last year!

Our old tree’s box busted at some point during the summer, spilling out the fake tree parts on our very dusty garage floor. We had been using the tree for probably ten or so years, so we decided to use this dirty opportunity to get a new one.

As a child I remember my family having real Christmas trees, and eventually replacing the real ones with a fake one. I was probably pretty young when the switch happened, so I’m kind of used to it. MizSplotchy, on the other hand, always had a real tree before she and I moved in together. Maybe someday we’ll go back to having real trees — I remember being fond of the smell, though one could always leave an open bottle of Pine-Sol out, I suppose.

If we were going to replace our fake tree with another fake tree, MizSplotchy said she wanted to have a pre-lit one. So, we packed up the kids and went to the center of all that is holy, Target. There I spied a golden Christmas tree, and gave her a smile. If we were going to have a fake tree, why not get a glaringly fake one? So, that is what we did.

The lights on our golden tree are all white (they were white on all the pre-lit trees we saw), which I was just a little bummed about. I had forgotten how much I like colored lights.

Still, once the tree was home and the decorating began, I got happy tingles up and down my spine. It was really nice watching the kids put ornaments on the tree (all clustered together in one section, of course).

We were talking about what we should do for dinner on decorating night, and MizSplotchy suggested we order pizza. She said we had ordered pizza the last two years we had decorated the tree. A tradition was born, and I didn’t even know it!

Of course, we had to put on the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas as musical accompaniment to the decorating. I still have yet to see the actual TV special, but after being introduced to the album by MizSplotchy, Christmas ain’t Christmas without it.

The golden tree definitely has a different aesthetic quality than a green one. For one, I think it goes smashingly with our zebra-ish drapes in the living room. Red looks really great on it — probably one of my favorite things now is how the little fabric bows we hung stand out against the gold. Of course, there are some down sides. With such a blingy tree, the blinged-out ornaments we have aren’t so spectactular. Sorry, disco ball ornament.

Anyways, here’s our tree. We still haven’t put the star on top, but other than that, it’s pretty much done.

Merry Disco Xmas!