What To Do The Saturday After Thanksgiving

We get our Christmas tree, almost always, the first Saturday after Thanksgiving.

On the brochure for Braun's farm, the different types of conifers are listed along with some brief comments. I'm partially tooting my own horn here, but when I told the farmer boy that I wanted a Frazier Fir, he handed me the sheet on which it said that this type was the most trendy. The point isn't that I pick an haute tree (I do). Anyone who knows me also knows that I've been cutting a Frazier Fir for at least the past 14 Christmases. At first, I was drawn to thier Charlie Brown-esque appearance. But it turns out that the uneven, scraggly sparseness was mostly just an attribute of the trees at Matt's farm in Ohio, where I cut 14-footers for free. Imagine my suprise when I was required to pay $8/foot for a Frazier in Michigan. Needless to say, I no longer get the towering type. The trees here are a bit more manicured, but still, not completely without personality.

I miss the trips to Matt's farm. Free trees were really just the parting gift after a day of campfires and hiking around with friends.