How to Get a Christmas Tree For Your Baby’s First Christmas

Seeing Christmas through your baby’s eyes is like seeing it clearly for the first time, minus all the yucky stuff you might have noticed over the years. As a parent you have the awesome responsibility of creating the Christmas of your dreams—for someone else! Bringing home a Christmas tree is a bright beginning. Follow these steps to get a Christmas tree for your baby’s first Christmas.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Baby
• Holiday spirit
• Christmas tunes for kids
• Twine
• Vehicle
• Tree stand

1. You’ve pictured it a thousand times, the wonder in your baby’s eyes when she sees the tree lit up with hundreds of twinkling lights—but first you need to get one. Plastic and aluminum will never do. Nothing but a fresh cut tree is good enough for your baby. Locate one in the state nearest you.
2. Pack up the station wagon or SUV with bottles, blankets, pacifier, a change of clothes, stuffed toys, three diapers, a box of wipes, finger food and some twine. You’re ready to roll.
3. Put on some tunes. Play Christmas music to enchant your baby on the way; only music involving children’s choirs, animated Christmas specials or singing ground squirrels will do.
4. Sing along! Try not to notice the pained look on your baby’s face.
5. Play “count the trees” on your way to the tree farm. Your baby will have no idea what you’re up to but will enjoy your frenzied efforts to out-do each other at spotting Christmas trees atop cars.
6. Arrive at the tree lot, having bribed your baby into quiet with a steady application of candy cane, held tightly by maternal fingers to prevent choking. Uncurl the aforementioned maternal fingers slowly to allow circulation to resume.
7. Carry your baby proudly into the pseudo-forest created for your arboreal pleasure. Tramp happily among the evergreens (or fight fifty-mile-per-hour winds and horizontal sleet) to select the perfect tree.
8. Have one of the strapping young men or women cut down the tree and drag it to the tree wrapping machine, since you have forgotten to bring a sling or baby backpack, and are too busy snapping photos anyway.
9. Pay for the tree. Explain to the cold, tired, busy tree farm attendant that this is your baby’s first Christmas. Show him your baby, show him fifteen photos of your baby from earlier in the year, move on when he looks past you and shouts, “Next!”
10. Tie that puppy down! The tree, not the baby. Use the twine you cleverly brought with the truckload of baby gear to tie the tree firmly to your vehicle—remember to lay it trunk first, to keep the topmost branches intact.
11. Arrive home with an exhausted infant in need of attention. Divide your activities between feeding, changing and holding the baby, and untying, carrying in and setting up the tree. Avoid asking your immobile baby to “stay right there while daddy brings in the tree,” because inevitably, this will be the moment he learns how to crawl.
12. Put down the baby while you adjust the tree stand. There are limits to what can be done one-handed, and this falls into the “just can’t be done without danger” category. Adjust swiftly; your baby will not care if the tree is listing east, but will care deeply if he is allowed to sit for a moment longer than necessary without your undivided attention.
13. Water the tree before your sleep-deprived parental minds forget, and your baby’s first Christmas tree becomes a withered, brown, lifeless fire hazard before a week has passed.
14. Stand back and admire, as a family, your baby’s first Christmas tree. Huddle together in peaceful holiday harmony, arms around each other, gazing happily at the symbol of your seasonal joy; only to wake the next morning in an uncomfortable, crumpled pile on the floor where you fell asleep, standing up, exhausted from your outing.

Tips & Warnings

• Do not attempt to cut down a tree yourself as a couple with a young baby. Who will hold the tree steady? Who will keep it from falling on the spouse with a saw? Who will flag down help when you give up trying and are too embarrassed to ask an employee? OK, maybe that is possible.
• Document, document, document—that’s what that expensive digital camera you bought when you found out you were expecting is for! Baby’s first Christmas tree can demand an album all its own; be sure to capture the car ride, the tree farm, the purple thumb you caught under the twine and nearly lost when you tied down the tree.

Who Can Help:

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