O' Christmas Brick

I used to consider myself to be a pretty Christmassy kind of person.  Not pretty in the sense of wearing pink tights and having freckles and ponytails, but in the sense that I really got into the Christmas spirit and had warm fuzzies about the holiday.

Sadly, it seems like each year those feelings fade a little further and further, especially now that Little Smoot has joined the squadron of non-believers.  It was a lot more fun when we could sneak around and pretend that a fat guy was going to come down the chimney and load us up with gifts.  We had fun with that for years, even though we don't even have a chimney.

I just got done, moments ago, hauling our damn tree up the steps and into the livingroom.  If you have a keen sense, you may already detect that I am not having fun with it so far.

This is a pre-lit tree, which is a very convenient feature since all you really need to do is haul it up the stairs and plug it in.  At least that's what's supposed to happen.  In reality, you drag the damn thing up the stairs and find out that three of the seven strands of lights do not function at all, causing Holiday Rage Syndrome (HRS).

I contacted Mrs. Smoot to give her a heads-up on this situation, and she suggested that our options are to put the tree up and just not light it (which would look dumb), add more lights to the existing burned out ones (which would look dumb), go spend a fortune on a new tree (which would cost a fortune), or wait until after Christmas and get a new tree at a discount (which kinda still leaves us without a lit tree THIS Christmas).

I want to suggest another idea... I'm thinking we should just move to a country that has an easier form of symbolizing the holiday.  Perhaps there is a country out there that, instead of having a Christmas Tree, uses a Christmas Brick.  Just bring the brick up to the livingroom and view it in awe, reminding us of that special night 2000 years ago when Jesus was born in a manger, which may have been... near a brick.  Whatever.