My Husband is Such a Cheapwad that He Painted a Christmas Tree on the Living Room Wall to Save a Couple Bucks

Aka: My husband is a crotchety lazy Grinch at Christmastime. But not quite as funny as the Jim Carey character. My husband and I have argued every Christmas about which Christmas traditions to pass on to our children. I am all about decking the halls and shelves and stairs with tinsel garland. I want to thumbtack Christmas cards on the wall. My inner heart tells me to hang the stockings on the fireplace mantle. And I want a funky, retro white fake Christmas tree from Walmart with both white lights and colored lights adorned with both old ornaments from previous years and stylish modern ornaments from the present year. If I could, I’d stick peacock feathers out of the boughs on the tree. My husband’s idea of Christmas includes a broken prelit green fake tree. Or a five-finger-discount-sourced-from-some-dude’s-property cedar tree. Put up one week before Christmas because he doesnt want to bother watering it. No ornaments because the pets or kids will knock them off anyway. No wreaths or garland because they’re too hard to get to in the garage. And we’ll just use pillow cases as stockings so we don’t have to find our other ones or buy new ones. After Thanksgiving we argue a lot for obvious reasons. So this year after already discussing with him about just taking the broken prelit one down from the highest shelf in the garage, he did something extraordinarily cheap. Almost trailer trash even. Okay, totally trailer trash. As I was editing images online, he came home on his lunch break, grabbed a can of green paint from the garage, and painted a seven foot tall Christmas Tree on our living room wall. Because the wall needed to be repainted anyway. Seriously folks. I am not joking here.

At first I laughed and teased him even more about being cheap. I even tried to go along with it for a few days. Then my friend, Crazy Texas Mommy, said something that spoke to me and brought me back to my senses, “That’s like on Where the Heart Is when Novalee said the only Christmas tree she ever had was one that one of her foster mother’s painted on the wall. She called her crazy.” So I decided to rent the movie on Netflix and here’s Novalee (played by Natalie Portman) saying it in her own words: “…When I was eight, I was livin’ with this old lady. She promised me we’d have a Christmas tree. And then she went and spent all her money…on a set of bagpipes…because, well, I guess she was just insane, but she felt bad. So, on Christmas morning, she found some green paint, and she painted a Christmas tree…on her living room wall, floor to ceilin’.” Thank you Candance for bringing me back to my senses. Not that my kids complaining about the one on the wall or if we could staple lights to the wall and hang ornaments from nails wasn’t enough to convince me that I have not only a cheap husband, but also an insane one. So yesterday afternoon, I headed to Walmart and bought a 6 1/2 foot white Christmas tree, blue ornaments, and a peacock to top the tree. The kids and I decorated it with the new ornaments and some old ones, strung colored lights to make it prettier, and adorned it with candycanes (from last year’s after Christmas sale). Next on our list: Stockings. I think I’m getting the little black bags I saw with “COAL” written on them for my husband and his brothers. Because I can. And they deserve it. I mean, we may not have a lot of money, but I’m also not settling for the one painted on my living room wall.

Any guesses on how long it takes my husband to paint over his trailer trash Christmas Tree?