Today is my third blog towards my "twelve days of Christmas" countdown, and it features my very-old-maybe-antique Christmas tree. Do you guys buy fresh Christmas trees or do you have an artificial tree? The tree that I currently use is artificial and dates back to about 1987, making it a whopping quarter of a century old. The Christmas before I went off to college, we got a real Christmas tree, but my family members thought it was too much of a hassle to get into the car, out of the car, through doors, up stairs, watered and cleaned up after. We've used our trusty artificial tree since.

I've noticed over the years that our tree has been shrinking, though. Its top, which we used to stick our star atop, has dulled to the point where we basically can't expect it to hold anything. One year, I decided to take advantage of the post-Christmas sales and brought a new tree home from Target, only to find that its quality was seriously substandard in comparison to our good friend, so it was promptly returned.

"Putting up the tree" is definitely a major Christmas tradition at my house, though these days, it's one that only I uphold. I even wrote a practice college essay in my senior year of high school on it, though I ended up going with other more relevant ones. I always put on some Christmas music or television program while doing it and try to have some snacks or hot chocolate nearby.