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I hope all residents of NF Nation had as merry a Christmas as my family did. It was good, albeit it a little unusual this year. We never did get our Christmas tree up, but I took inspiration from fishermen in my attempt to provide a substitute.

Mind you, we had a tree. Usually we get one the first week of December, cart it home, and within a week, it's up and decorated in the family room, nestled into a corner. This year between bad weather and an unusually hectic schedule, two or three weeks slipped by before we found ourselves at Wal-Mart one Sunday night near closing time, scouring the gardening section for a suitable real tree. Thankfully we found one, lashed it to the roof of the car and scooted home.

We carried it around back to the deck off the family room. We deemed it a suitable storage place until we could cart it inside and dress that puppy up. Numerous totes of garland, ornaments and lights, already hauled down from the attic, stood at the ready.

But Mother Nature then made us pay for not throwing a tarp over the tree. She made it rain steadily and consistently during the week before Christmas. I ended up carting a very soggy tree to the basement, hoping it would dry out in time for us to put it up.

No such luck, and still the rain fell. In the basement our tree remained. How could we have Christmas without a tree?

I pondered this question as I wrapped presents late on Christmas Eve. I started thinking about how fishermen use crab pots and lobster traps to fashion Christmas trees to beautiful effect. One Natural Channel video on YouTube declares a Maine lobster trap tree (I suspect it's the one in Rockland, but the video doesn't list the town it's in) one of the 10 most famous Christmas trees in the world, standing alongside those in Rockefeller Center in New York City, and in the White House.

And this year, a couple of lobstermen in Gloucester, Mass., helped give a shout-out to the Jewish community, creating the world's first lobster pot menorah.

 

Surely I could fashion a non-traditional Christmas tree of sorts, too. I used the small couch situated along the wall as the foundation and stacked all our presents on it. Thinking of the way the traps are arranged to create the alternative trees, I attempted to do likewise with the presents and a few pillows. I topped it with a Santa cap hung from the curtain rod above the couch to crown my creation.

Alas, my makeshift Christmas couch was nowhere near as beautiful as the fishermen's trap trees. But it did get a good chuckle from the rest of the family, and we still enjoyed the holiday. Hope you did, too, and best wishes for a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

 

 

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