When that special time of the year comes around and Christmas music starts to play, it’s time to pick out the perfect Christmas tree. Whether your tree goes up on Thanksgiving Day or one week before Christmas, picking out a Christmas tree is the number one tradition. Thousands of families participate in the holiday ritual from coast to coast; approximately 25 to 30 million real Christmas trees are sold every year in the U.S.

Most families don’t just want ANY tree; they want the perfect tree, and each family usually has their own checklist. The first thing on the tree checklist is the height: will it be too tall for the living room or is a taller the tree the better? Next is the fullness of the tree. You have to make sure it doesn’t have any bare spots or gaps between the branches. The last target on the checklist is how straight the tree is because everyone knows when a crooked tree and fragile ornaments means the end result isn’t pretty.

Once the family Christmas tree has been selected, placed in its spot and your house has been filled with the smell of pine; it’s time to decorate. First on goes the tinsel and then the lights. But as luck usually goes, the lights won’t work. So you have to go through to twist and turn every little bulb until you find the culprit or until you finally realize that maybe after ten years the lights have reached their end (in that case it’s time to unwind the lights and start over). After the long and tiring fight with the lights, it is time for the bulbs. Now if you don’t recognize them, they are the “extremely fragile” bulbs that have been dropped over and over and are still miraculously never broken. Then come the childhood ornaments: the painted handprints, poorly colored elves, all of the “Baby’s First Christmas” and “Baby’s Second Christmas.” At each of these, your mom pauses to go down memory lane. When the tree is finished, the time has come to complete other traditions of the holiday season.