Christmas and Sand

Week 2 in my new neighborhood...I have to say that I'm still liking it. It starts off slowly and then gets busier as the morning progresses...then it's time for me to leave. It's a perfect arrangement...economic success and sanity for me all in the same morning session. As the season marches on I am trying to be more creative in finding the right mix of social and personal time. In the land of pastoral artistry, there is precious little "personal" time, yet at the same time it is essential to my role. It's a paradox of sorts.
I'm sitting here in the loft area of my newly adopted hangout and contemplating the greenery of the season. I'm wondering who the first person was that thought it was a good Christmasy thing to do to hang some form of green stuff to bring out the spirit of the season. I'm sure that Wikipedia could give me some clues, I'm just too lazy to investigate. I mean really, for my own heritage remembering the birth of "The Baby", wouldn't something in the browns or tans work better communicating the real thing? We spend a good deal of time effort and cash on providing snow for the occasion, wouldn't sand be more appropriate? One of the curiosities that my wife and I have seasonal discussions about is the tradition of "flocking" Christmas trees that takes place on tree lots here. If you don't know what that is, basically it's a christmas trees version of a spray on tan. It doesn't naturally have snow that stays on the branches, unless you live in the fields, so you can get spray on snow that will stay. To a native of the northeast and snowy Christmases, this is just wrong. I'm told it makes it more authentic. Authentic to who? Jesus wouldn't recognize your noble fir sprayed with the magical white stuff.
In the quest for a more authentic Christmas feel, I believe that for next year I am going to investigate some new options. For one a ban on flocking will be put in place. I am proposing a repurposing of all the flocking equipment. It seems to me that the white crap that gets spewed all over the greenery could just as well be sand. Out here you can get your trees imported from the Blue Ridge of North Carolina through Williams-Sonoma. I am considering opening up a lot with trees imported from Israel. I'll provide the sand

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