According to what my parents told me when I was a little boy, the Christmas tree should leave the house on January 6th. This is 3 King day, the day when the three kings, Balthasar, Melchior and Kaspar finally made it to Bethlehem. I missed the date and the tree here in the house started dropping the decorations one by one, telling me that it was time to let it go.
I could have just wrapped it into a piece of plastic and dragged to the trash room, but since last year or so, I made it into a tradition to cut the tree into pieces before giving it back into the recycling bin. So for the last two hours or so, it was me versus tree. It is pretty clear that I won this battle. I was equipped with the little wood saw that is part of my leatherman. I did not want to use anything more advanced than that, to give the tree a chance to protect itself. Whatever I could handle with my bare hands, I did. The tree only had needles and tree sap. It was a tough fight.
I decided not to use any gloves and for fairness reasons to attack with no shoes on. It was a vicious fight with many dodged punches and some more or less serious injuries on both sides. Both of my hands are bleeding now. The left hand got saw some serious needle cuts. The right hand is now black bacause covered in a layer of tree sap mixed with some forest dust from the tree. I will not be able to wash this off for days. (I remember last year, this stuff is here to stay.)
The fight was so tough, that I decided to keep the trunk of the tree and to make little tree skulls out of it as a reminder for the generations to come... wait, there is no such thing as a tree skull. I will probably make little farm animals, or maybe some other cute decorations for next year.
Most of the needles are gone now. The vacuum cleaner will make the apartment smell like pine until August or so.
I am back at the computer, working at my project.
I hope the spirit of the tree will forgive me that I cut it apart like this, but actually, this was a much more exciting way for the tree to leave the house than to be simply thrown out. The trunk still smells like a deep forest as do my hands. Boy, am I glad that the Christmas tradition does not involve decorating a grizzly bear.