So there I was, strolling into Day Job, and motion caught my eye. A huge mound of… shrubbery approached from eight o’clock low. Truly enormous heap of greenth. I could hear wheels on pavement, so I was not too worried about this being an attack by killer tomatoes (zombie killer tomatoes if they were still moving after the other night’s freeze), but rolling bushes are not exactly common out here unless they are dried and the wind is blowing.
Then the heap-o-greens pivoted and I realized it was the chief of maintenance moving the Christmas tree from the garage into the rotunda so the Student Council could lead the decorating.
A few days later, Brother Vector (math teacher) strolled past my classroom door singing under his breath, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year. There are papers to grade and finals to make and Thanksgiving’s here! It’s the most…” You could watch students stare as he passed. I guess they forgot what comes after Thanksgiving Break.
Cat Rotator's Quarterly 
Sounds like Birnam Wood is coming to Dunsinane, yet again . . . or, at least, to Dunsinane’s foyer.
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The next day, one of the teachers was supervising the re-fluffing of the tree. The students had patient expressions as she walked around saying, “No, that branch needs to come this way. I can see the wall. OK, yes, now that branch, no, the other that branch…”
MacBeth is next semester. They might have been making plans…
Ni!
I sang that snatch of carol to my coworker. He informed me then that there is a state law against singing Christmas carols before Thanksgiving, and citizens upon whom the carol is inflicted are allowed to shoot the singer in self-defense.
(I’m not sure if he was grumpier because it was a Christmas parody, or because I was attempting to stay somewhat near on key and tempo with all the success of a piper cub staying on ILS while in severe turbulence.)
c4c
Snicker. Decorating might be postponed, however, because there’s always one joker on Student Council that wants to endlessly amend and revise the motion to decorate. Unless … a motion from the floor, passed X-1, to make him or her one of the decorations.
Dorothy, that made me laugh about the Cub, but you reminded me … once on a time, I met one of the Piper brothers, but now can’t remember which one. I need to recheck some old chapter records for help.
No, no, no… NO Christmas stuff until AFTER Thanksgiving… sigh…
Agreed.
The tree is assembled and now looks like a tree. The official decoration will be after Thanksgiving break. For some reason the tree needs to “settle” in the commons for a week. *shrug* We have some strange traditions at St. Angus in the Grass.
Maybe the “settling” is to let the students get their more creative decorating urges out of the way while it would be easier to detect and remove them, rather than waiting until all the decorations are up and you’d have to hunt for the errant contribution to holiday cheer.
I suspect you have the right of it. That, or Maintenance pulled it out early one year so they could use the space for other projects over Thanksgiving break, and the teachers decided that this satisfied the war between those who would start Christmas decorating at the first frost vs. the Only After Thanksgiving (correct) contingent.
At my small, sparsely populated county high school (graduating class about 144) tradition held that the Senior Class provide and decorate the school tree in the main lobby. A real Christmas tree, featuring a REAL tree. Alas, my senior year the Administration got all safety conscious and decreed that we must use an ARTIFICIAL “tree” purchased by the Admin because of fire hazards or similar wet blanketyness. Thus we would be the first Senior Class to have to use a phony tree.
Naturally, we were outraged. Naturally, we launched a counter plot.
One Sunday night prior to the last week before Christmas school break a small covert crack team of senior boys departed a special Christmas service at church, changed from Sunday best into tactical garb (well, blue jeans and parkas) and headed out to a land parcel belonging to one of the boy’s parents. This parcel had been a Christmas tree farm years before, but had been let go. We…er, I mean the covert team… selected the biggest pine tree we (dang!) they could get on top of a Chevy Suburban — which turned out to be about 35 feet tall — cut it down, secured to the ‘burb, and eased over to the high school.
The team put a huge red bow on the top and spiraled a wide red ribbon down from the top. Removing the cover from a round drain grate conveniently located in front of the school provided the tree stand. Intelligence operatives had obtained keys to the administration office, so an agent was dispatched to leave a 18″ tall Christmas card from the Senior Class, previously inscribed with a little red school house and a huge Christmas tree in front of it.
The next day as the school busses pulled up it was snowing like crazy, dusting the tree, and it looked glorious in green, white, and red. One of my favorite memories of school. The principal made an announcement over the speaker system thanking the Senior Class for the gift, and he was good enough to leave it up until we all departed for Christmas break at the end of the week.
Since this was a public school, I suppose today we…er, the crack covert team… would be charged with a hate crime or some such.
Probably would, but the next thing would have been a cow in the principal’s office. Not that I’ve ever been involved in anything even faintly like that, but I’ve heard stories.
Well done by the covert team!