It all started with the tree. I never liked Charlie Brown’s tree. I only liked Snoopy’s. Blame it on years of inhaling evergreen-scented artificial snow fumes, but I find no Christmas inspiration in driving to a forest, which used to be my grocery store parking lot, and haggling with a tattooed guy named Zeke, over a languishing live tree.

That’s how I got to be standing in Sears deciding between the Colorado Blue Sprucelle, the Austrian Fine Pine and the Forever Foil Fir, their botanical and mechanical distinctions, described to me by Len, who sold me my car battery last Spring.

“The Blue Spruce folds up like so,” he says. I’m sold.

I never did fold up my Spruce though. You see, we store it in the garage wrapped in a sheet. It doubles as a Halloween ghost…