Christmas and Beer

It's been a long-standing tradition in our house that we cut down our Christmas tree at our favorite tree farm the day after Thanksgiving.  It's also been a long-standing tradition that we have to drink a beer every time we put up the Christmas tree.  ("Long-standing" being as long as we've been putting up real Christmas trees in our house, which is about 8 Christmases.)  This tradition began the first year we used our current tree stand and realized that we needed a way to keep the screws from going into the actual tree stump.  Low and behold, my inventive husband cracked open a beer and used the bottle cap as a buffer between the screw and the tree and ta-da!  A tradition was born.  Part of the fun of it is that we would come home from cutting down the tree and rest for a bit with the beer, then put up the tree once the beer was gone.  That part of the tradition died the Christmas I was pregnant with Connor so I couldn't help with the beer and the kids kept pestering Chris to "chug" four beers before the tree was up (yea...didn't happen), but you get the idea.  Finally, this year, we got some root beer in bottles so the kids could each have something with a bottle cap and feel like they are participating as well (and they couldn't be more excited about it!).  

It's all about tradition.  :)