Half Empty? You Bet!

The other day someone indicated that I was a “glass is half empty” kind of person - as if it was a BAD thing! Of course my glass is half empty! After decades of consumerism and self indulgence, I’m surprised to find that the level is only half way down!

A glass that is half full is suspicious. Maybe it was never filled all the way to the top. But a half empty glass? That most certainly started out full at one time. Between the full state and the half empty state, someone got to slurp down the delicious contents. When the glass gets to be half empty, it’s because the contents were good. So, despite misconceptions to the contrary, a half empty glass indicates a life well lived. A half full glass? That’s likely as good as it ever got!

I must admit that half of anything always sends up a red flag. Recently they began marketing half Christmas trees. These are neatly bisected from top to bottom, so you can mount them on the wall, in the Christmas version of the wallflower. That way the tree doesn’t intrude by taking up too much space. This smacks of rampant practicality. Christmas tree are supposed to be large and showy and in the way. They are supposed to drop needles in your coffee cup as you walk by and tempt even the most docile cat into an ornament-busting climbing expedition. And there should be plenty of room underneath for a small child to get lost in the wonder of the packages.

Before Christmas trees became mere facsimiles, they were actually organic and came out of the forest. You would go out swaggering like Paul Bunyan, scout around, and chop one down. Ultimately, every Christmas tree was pretty much just half a tree. Of course, the tree looked great – until you chopped it down. Then it looked… not so great. By the time a tree was hauled over hill and dale and arrived in the living room, you felt blessed to have a quarter of a tree left! There was always a less than perfect side, one with only a few thoughtlessly placed anemic branches. It wasn’t exactly a perfect half of a tree like the current renderings in plastic, but it definitely wasn’t a full tree either. A little bit of Martha Stewart style carpentry with a saw and a drill would be needed to correct the problem. It required only a little skill, plus a tolerance for sap on your floor, your pants, and your cat.

Now life is so much more complicated that it’s turned the corner back into simplicity. You can just buy a mere half of a tree. If you change your mind in the future, you can go back to the store and buy the other half and strap them together. Voila – you now have a whole tree. You have just bought a Christmas tree on the installment plant er, uh, plan.

The advantage of half a tree is that it requires only half the lights and half the decorations. The downside is that it yields only half the presents, all of which must conform to the theme of one half. For example, you may receive one sock out of a pair, a container of Half and Half, or half a loaf of bread (better than no loaf). If will only take you half the time to unwrap your gifts, and blissfully, you will have paid only half as much as you would have with a whole tree looming over your wallet. But, worryingly, half way through Christmas Day the lights will go out, since you never should have cut those strings in half. Hopefully you bought a bunch of them – at least six of one, half a dozen of another. But things will work out okay. I suspect that in the long run, it actually won’t even be half bad.