by J. Paxton

Created on: December 14, 2008

Poor college students? Perhaps, but never call 'em unresourceful. One of my favorite Christmas traditions evolved from the days of living in a dingy apartment on campus.

As the holidays rolled around, the four of us who lived together were feeling the strain of the end of the semester. All-nighters and an all-Ramen diet were things we were all too familiar with. One particularly bad day, as we were crowded into our living room, our floor hidden beneath laptops and texts and folders, my best friend Megan decided we needed something to keep our spirits up. She returned from the store one day, a smile spread across her face, plastic bags hanging from her arms, and a four foot tall, fake tree in her hands. "We," she matter-of-factly announced, "are going to have Christmas".

The rest of us gleefully threw our books and papers aside. Megan carefully laid her purchases on the sofa. She had not only gotten us a tree, but some lights and cheap ornaments to decorate it with. The four of us huddled around our Charlie Brown tree, all the stress of the week quickly forgotten. It didn't take long to finish our job, and we proudly took a step back and looked upon it when we were done. I believe it was Anna who ruined the moment:

"Guys? How are we going to put it up?"

Megan, bless her heart, had indeed gotten everything we needed....almost. We had no tree stand. Anna tried leaning it against our television stand, but it slid right down. Ashley tried to stuff it in an empty vase of flowers, but the trunk was too wide. Our Christmas spirit was quickly deflating.

And then, I found it: our solution.

"VODKA!" I cried.

Megan raised her eyebrows. "It's like, 10 in the morning."

I waved her off and retrieved an empty handle of vodka in our (overflowing) recycling bin. Again, keep in mind we were poor college students...so it nothing more than a plastic bottle. I took my pocket knife and chopped off the neck, then kept trimming more and more off 'til the opening was big enough for the trunk. I was quite impressed with my handiwork. I put in a little bit of water to weight it down, then carefully slid the tree in. Perfect.

For a second, my flatmates looked like they didn't know if they should be disgusted or estatic. Thankfully estatic won out, and they burst into applause. However, Megan's face quickly fell once more. "I didn't get a star for it."

It was true. Our tree had no top.

Without fail, Ashley picked up the discarded neck and placed it on top. "THERE," she exclaimed. "Perfect!"

And so, what has since then been affectionately known as the Vodka Tree, was born.

Learn more about this author, J. Paxton.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.