Along with getting to sleep later in the mornings, take a shower whenever you want to (it’s always free), and go to bed without worrying that your teenager isn’t home yet, it turns out that there’s another advantage to being an empty nester.

You can get a Christmas tree as late as you want to.

Usually–in our child-populated pre-Christmases–we went out to a huge tree farm with about a million other discerning families and their screaming kids, and spent the day walking around, examining trees for such qualities as branch fullness, needle sharpness, overall tree shapeliness, trunk sturdiness, and–well, of course, size and degree of difficulty to carry to the car.

Factions formed. There was the I Only Want a Douglas Fir Faction (I was the president of that one), and the Can’t We Once Get a Tree That Will Fill The Entire Living Room (led by one of the children, usually), and the Could We Just Pick The Tree and Get Something to Eat Faction (another child). Often there was a standoff–the supporters of two perfectly fine trees going toe to toe, and a parent having to break the tie.

And then–well, we’d get the thing home, and never once would it fit in the house because somehow an outside tree always looks smaller than it is when compared to, say, your ceiling height. More gnashing of teeth. More sawing. 

Saturday–December Sixteenth, so late there are hardly any trees left–we woke up, stretched, yawned, read the paper, lounged, chatted, and then one of us said, “So should we get the tree today?”

“Sure.”

So we got in the car, drove a mere two miles down the road to the tiniest little tree farm you ever saw, one we’d never even noticed before. Once we got in, we realized they only had about fifty trees, and none of them were what you’d call “good” or even “tree-like.” Some had trunks that were more like stems, and others looked as though they could be diagnosed with scoliosis. Some had branches so far apart they looked almost like trees you’d see in a Japanese water color, sort of floaty and serene.

We were the only customers there. The old farmer, in his red flannel shirt, was so pleased to see us that he was practically jumping up and down as he cranked up the Christmas carols so that we could be put into the Christmas spirit while we walked through his field.

Naturally there was the point when we got hysterical with laughter, picturing any of these trees working out. But what could we do? We couldn’t very well leave and disappoint this farmer, not when he was the nicest man in the world, offering cups of hot chocolate and humming along to “Silent Night,” could we?

So we went with a white spruce that will not endanger our ceiling in any way. Its advantage over many trees we’ve had in our past is the fact that you can tell right away which side needs to go against the wall, without even having to think about it.

This tree, as I told the children on the phone that night, probably wouldn’t have won the Charlie Brown Tree Contest, but it might have been first runner-up.

And it’s so skinny that there’s lots of room still in the living room.

“Room for more presents,” said my daughter.