Christmas at the Flanigan's

written by Ralph, the Flanigan's Christmas tree

Every year, I get pulled out of my box and set up with relative ease, thank goodness.  What a pain it would be if I was fumbled with for hours like the neighbor’s tree.  I am dressed and wrapped with lights, sometimes with that god-awful tinsel thrown all over me.  And every year I have the same thought, "Don't they ever get tired of all this?"  I mean, it's pretty much the same thing, every dang time.  They pull me out and the big, fury one sets me up.  There I will sit for the next four weeks or so, naked as a forest tree until they hook all the shiny stuff on me, and I will watch them go through their same old rituals all performed to their same old songs.  

This year there are some new faces, but everything else is pretty much going according to plan.  This afternoon, they will all go away for an hour or two and return, their faces glowing.  I'm not sure what they do when they all go away, but they come back mumbling about songs and a message and something about candles.  Oh, just that word sends chills up my trunk.  I have always been afraid of fire.  Anyway, thankfully I don't have a taste for human food, or else I would envy all the cooking things smelling up the house.  From what I can tell, they will gather around one of my uncles who I've heard was cut down for a table and enjoy their meal by the light of more of those *shudder* candles.  

I don't understand all the things they will put around me after their dinner besides the fact that they have wasted more of my relatives to wrap the boxes, only to unwrap them in the morning.  It's kind of cruel, actually, in my opinion.  I also don't understand what happens next, and I never have, probably in large part because they don't care to turn me to watch what they call a movie.  I can only listen. 

In the morning (barely morning, still dark out), there will be flying paper and boxes.  It's as if they don't even know how many had to die for this activity to happen.  If I shared human emotion, it would probably make me cry.  

It's a funny thing, though, when all the colorful paper carnage is removed and they are left with their items, there is a sense I am not sure how to name.  I have never felt it before, and not just because I have never felt.  I think it is an emotion not many humans even feel.  I guess the best word I know for it is fullness.  

There is more cooking in the other room (is eating all these humans ever do?!), and the rest of the day is mostly spent sitting around 'ooh'-ing and 'aww'-ing over all the items.  There is also more food.  

Do you see what I mean?  Year after year, this is the drill.  I must be lacking some critical understanding of the whole spiel because they don't seem tired of these dry rituals at all.  Actually, they seem rather... happy.  

Merry Christmas, glowing humans.  At least these silly things bring you some sort of warmth.  I'm sure it will be just the same next year.  See you then.