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Elvis among us
21 december 2005

War on Christmas
20 december 2005

Friends like these
18 december 2005

Out of my tree
4 december 2005

Whole lotta candles!
27 november 2005

Conversion Experience
23 november 2005

Orange you excited?
22 november 2005

A sunshine day
21 november 2005

GlamCraft
17 november 2005

For Five Bucks
16 november 2005

Out of my tree

Christmas trees should not be sold by the foot. To my mind, that's just too arbitrary.

For one thing, it doesn't take width into consideration.

Tony and I went down to the Christmas tree lot out on Solano in Berkeley. They have a lot there every year. It's one of those independent lots with the lights hanging around the perimeter and the plastic snowman. I can't buy a tree at the Home Depot. Too impersonal.

Anyway, they have this one tree it must be nine feet tall. They want like $110 bucks for it. I'm thinkin' "Well, sure it's nine feet tall, but it's so skinny it looks like a coat rack!"

Tony and I settled on a bushy six-footer for $54, and, pound-for-pound, I think we got a much better deal.

Which brings me to my point. Why don't they sell Christmas trees by the pound? If you buy a six-foot tree for $54, that's $9 a foot. That's crazy!

But you figure that same tree, if you sell it by weight, would probably come to about $1.80 a pound, about the same as beefsteak tomatoes at peak season.

Here's another problem I have with the traditional Christmas tree pricing model. I'm a guy who likes to apply a certain amount of customization to the tree once I get it home. You know what I'm saying? For example, I secure the tree to the stand with six-inch screws from the hardware store.

Oh yeah. You gotta show that tree who's boss!

And one thing that I think is very important is you have to put a fresh cut in the tree. That's so it will absorb water from your Christmas tree stand.

Well, think about it. Let's say you saw three inches off the bottom of your tree. At $9 a foot, you just lost $2.25 worth of tree! And you haven't even taken it inside yet! It's still sitting on a sawhorse in your driveway!

Sure you can glue some eyes and legs on the 3-inch tree chunk and turn it into a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or something, but if you're like most people you're just going to leave it in the garage until you have enough of them to make ornamental stepping stones for your garden gnome.

Kurt "big daddy" True
4 december 2005