Bad taste and bad luck

Yes, Danielle’s mother bought us an artificial tree at the start of December. This was because we’d chosen not to have a tree in 2008.

“You must have a tree!” said Marcia.

In which case, why did she buy us something made of plastic, with an integrated lighting system?

Take a look at it here -

If you think it is anything but vulgar, I have nothing more to say to you.

We had it in the dining room and it was like having the old bag with us for the whole of the holiday. It was wiry and intrusive and whenever you looked at it, you realised that there wasn’t enough beauty in the world. For some reason, I’d started to refer to it as “M.”

To be fair, Danielle hated it as well, but she didn’t want to hurt the evil overlord’s feelings, so it went up on the 24th of December, and was still there when Danielle left. I took it down almost immediately after that. It might have been “10th night” rather than “12th”, but I reckoned that a little more bad luck would probably go unnoticed.