Christmas is supposed to be 75 percent simpler this year. I just put up my first quarter tree.
In case this bit of genius has escaped you, the quarter tree is the online artificial solution to too-little-space-for-a-Christmas-tree.
The ads for these little pre-lit wedges work overtime to explain the concept.
“Imagine if a tree were a 7.5-foot tall Lemon Meringue pie, and you sliced it into four pieces,” says one. “This tree is one of those four big pieces of pie but way less sticky and tart.”
“We actually have room for a whole tree,” my daughter pointed out when the astonishingly little three-foot box arrived in the mail.
I couldn’t argue. The living room corner has hosted some giants over the years. But no matter how many hours spent shivering in the tree lot, there was always a side with bare branches that had to be hidden in the corner.
“Now we’re just ordering one with no back side,” I told her. “It will be lighter, I can put it up myself, and it will be so much simpler to decorate: 25% of the work! “
Unpacking the suspiciously tiny box was not as easy as pie. It was, in fact, just the first step in my sticky, tart mess of an idea.
I knew I was in trouble when three eye screws fell out of the box. Eye screws, in the world of “simple to assemble,” always mean holes. And holes always progress rapidly from “hmmm…do not seem to line up” to “NO (expletive deleted) WAY these line up.” And two of them did not.
Also perplexing was the sudden realization – not addressed in the instructions – that a tree bare on one side cannot balance itself on an ordinary stand.
“Simple physics would tell you that….” I heard my late father saying. Happily, though, the stand was not ordinary. It had two long legs and two short – two, it seemed for the bare side and two for the full.
With some twisting and eye-screwing of the stand, the tree did, in fact, balance itself, and astonishingly, lit itself up when plugged in. I should probably mention that the “It” we are talking about here was a very sparce-looking “It.” One, though, that I assured my daughter could be improved with decorating.
“I’ll get the tree skirt,” she said and bolted downstairs to fetch the now-splotched felt heirloom on which my grandmother had glued all names in our immediate family as of 1954. Over the years, we’d updated it – adding names upon birth and marriage and stealthily scrapping them off upon divorce.
Unfortunately, with names full circle, we’d have to eliminate 75% of the family in one year.
“I’ll just buy a quarter tree skirt,” I said, and went off to Google one. Apparently they are not yet invented.
“I’ll just make it myself,” I said, five words that should never be uttered just before Christmas.
As for the decorations, let’s just say I had no idea how attached certain family members had become to one or the other. I have decreed that anyone choosing more than five must help take down the tree.
And that may make this year’s Christmas more than 75% simpler.
