Here’s a Christmas tale from my family: Once upon a time, my Sicilian great grandmother got so pissed at her crooked Christmas tree that she nailed it to the floor. This is a woman I can relate to.

Would it be Scroogey of me to say how much I have hated our do-it-yourself Christmas tree from Home Depot, the discount one with no instructions? The one my husband bought without me 8 years ago when I was too pregnant to object, much less go with him to pick it out. Every fricking little piece had to be assembled. Eventually we wrote down the order of the branches in crayon on the side of the box. But still, why was it me, every single year, who had the thankless job of putting that damn thing together, and then stringing it with a wad of lights?

This year, I said “No more, we’re getting another tree — WITH BUILT IT LIGHTS.” Then I priced them — $399 at Hobby Lobby — and that’s HALF PRICE! So I figured I would suffer through the tree assemblage one last time and buy a marked-down tree after Christmas. But fate had other plans.

This morning, Bob and I hauled the old tree box out of the attic, the box sagging so badly we had to slide it down the stairs. Just like every other year, the kids helped me take out the pieces and organize them on the floor, and then magically disappeared, with only me listening to Jimmy Buffet singing “How’d you like to spend Christmas on Christmas Island?” Answering him with a screaming “YES” in my head as I fished into the box for the last of the moldy branches. Then I saw it, a little mess of hair and sticks, no wait, bones, nestled into the crux of a branch. Down in the bottom of the box were tell-tale pellets. I went upstairs where everybody was hiding watching TV.

“I can’t do this,” I told them. “I just can’t.” When I reported dead mice in the tree box, they all went rushing downstairs, faster than Christmas morning, yelling, “Let me see!”

We debated for a split second whether to go ahead and assemble the tree, but Bob said the magic words, “mouse droppings,” and I helped him shove all the branches in the garbage like so much cast off wrapping paper.

So guess what’s in my living room now? That’s right folks, a shiny new tree with BUILT IN LIGHTS. It came in THREE pieces WITH INSTRUCTIONS. I bought it my own damn self. Somewhere up there my great grandma is looking down on me and smiling.