When did you learn that Christmas trees look much smaller at the tree lot, than when you get them home?

For years, every Christmas I would fight the battle of the too tall Christmas tree. No matter how much I tried to reason, explain, and plead, my first wife would insist on having me buy a too-tall-for-the-house tree and we would end up with a tree that looked like it grew into the ceiling.

And every time, she would stand back and proclaim, “It’s perfect.” I guess it was. Why not? If Charlie Brown can conjure sentiment by wrapping a blanket around a twig of a tree, why can’t a tree that encompasses the entire living room and spans across the ceiling be “perfect?”

Christmas perfect is in the eye and heart of the beholder.