My family has but one Black Friday tradition. Being the sort of people who are frightened of both large crowds and rampant consumerism, we have never ventured into more traditional realms of post-Thanksgiving capitalist gluttony. But our plans do involve making a purchase: every year, this is the weekend when we cut down the Koster family’s Christmas tree.

We’ve done the you-cut Christmas tree as a fivesome for as long as I’ve been alive (I only missed one year, when studying abroad), and my parents and older siblings have been doing it in fours and threes and twos longer than that. But apart from those two constantscut down your own tree, Thanksgiving weekendnot much else has stayed the same in all that time.

Some things didn’t change for years. For most of my childhood, our favorite tree farm was the one in Hamilton that offered free donut holes and had a Christmas village facade built along one side of their pole barn. When they closed several years ago, we spent a couple of post-Thanksgivings at the discount tree place a township over, which wasn’t being actively maintained and where it was common to pass by the trapezoidal remains of a fifteen-foot tree where only the top seven feet had been desirable. Last year we took a gamble on a Facebook page and ended up in the several acres behind some couple’s house out in the country. He makes the wreaths; she runs the Venmo account. We came back this year and they remembered us.

Other things have changed to accommodate various family members’ needs. We go on Saturday because my library is open on Black Fridays. When my brother bought his own house, we started cutting down two trees. When he got married, my sister-in-law graciously joined our annual outing, even though all it really amounts to is tromping through a field while my mother meticulously examines trees for fullness, greenness, and symmetricality (ironic for a woman who used to read us Why Christmas Trees Aren’t Perfect annually but who also very gamely lets us point this out to her every year) and then watching someone else disappear underneath it to awkwardly cut the chosen one down with a borrowed tree saw.

Despite having my own place for several years at this point, I’d not yet added a third to the Koster family’s annual tree commitment. 2023, however, was to be the year. This is the normal timeframe for me and home decor changes; I am, unfortunately, pretty content with furniture-based mediocrity and averse to anything that involves moving things up the apartment building’s stairwell (ask my friend about the spreadsheet she had to make to get me to replace my fifteen-year-old mattress). I bought an expensive tree stand and borrowed a string of old lights from my parents’ basement. Preparations thus complete, I readied myself to finally be the one disappearing into the (probably) muddy vegetation while my siblings made sideline sports commentary about my efforts.

Such is the joy of tradition.

My sister was the one who actually carried the tree up the stairs. I’m looking at it now, where it sits in a bucket (also borrowed from my parents’ basement), leaning against the wall/my desk chair because the expensive tree stand I unboxed the night before turned out to be cracked and leaking sand(?) all over my living room carpet. The replacement I ordered from Amazon won’t be here until tomorrow (turns out I’m less immune to post-Thanksgiving capitalist gluttony than I thought). The tree itself is still bound up in the red and green netting meant to contain its branches on the car ride over here. Taken as a whole, the effect is slightly hostage-situation-esque and will remain that way until the new stand arrives and I can free it from its festive prison.

In the meantime, bucket tree is still an upgrade from the 8.5 x 11 jpeg of a Christmas tree that I stuck to my wall in lieu of anything more creative three years ago and is still there because again, it takes me three years to change a thing. I’ll take it down once I buy a tree skirt. 

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