Our Christmas Tree

We bought our Christmas tree last weekend when we rented a car. It's smaller and scrawnier than the usual trees we get each year, but it turned out lovely. When we last lived in Germany 14 years ago, we never had a Christmas tree, so this time around I purposely brought many of our decorations, though I left the lights and the Christmas tree stand at home. So that meant that we had to buy new lights and a new stand here in Germany. Well, as I said in one of my last posts, Germans definitely know how to do Christmas, but I never knew about their fantastically efficient Christmas tree stands. Totally different than what I've seen in the States. There, we have mostly plastic stands with four screws that you have to basically screw into the trunk of your tree while the other person is holding it up straight. It usually takes a few attempts to get it right and maybe you have to do a bit of chopping with the hacksaw. Well, my friends, not with a German stand, the one we bought is simply ingenious. You place the tree in the stand. There are four bars, instead of screws, all connected by a thick wire. Then, using a foot pedal, you push down on it and it tightens the wires and draws the four support bars tight against the tree at an equal tightness so that the tree stands up straight on the first go. I was amazed. It took two minutes to get our tree in the stand and tightened. We were decorating before we knew it. Hats off to whoever invented this handy little tree stand. I can tell you one thing, it's coming back home with us when we leave.