I come home to find a white box in the middle of the living room big enough to hold one of those plastic steam engines a kid can sit on top of while pulling friends around the living room on box cars over linked-together railroad tracks.

“A train!” I yell, overjoyed, as locomotives – or just about anything with steam belching out of its belly (except ravenous dogs mistaking my fingers for sausages) – I love.

“I made an executive decision,” my wife, Tia declares.

Hearing this, I know two things. First, whatever the decision is, it cannot be questioned.

Second, it cannot even be argued with. Or, rather, I can, but I know better not to.

“My friend Sophie (not her real name, to protect her aesthetic judgment) said she saw the most beautiful artificial Christmas tree at Douglas Fir, Ltd” (another made-up name to protect the store selling fake firs).

OK, to say “the most beautiful artificial tree” of any genus is like saying “the most beautiful impression at Madame Tussaud’s wax emporium.” I mean, have you ever seen such ghastly representations of living tissue? Or Orlando’s parade of presidents that look and sound like the monsters you imagined living under your bed when 5 years old?

“And,” Tia goes on selling me on the tree, “Sophie said it was really inexpensive.”

Well, that made me feel better. But “cheap” is relative, right? Inexpensive to some is outrageous to others – like me, when, unfortunately, I catch sight of the price tag when removing the first of the tree’s three stages (like a rocket’s) from the box.

I know enough, however, after almost 50 years of marriage, not to exclaim, “Not expensive? How can you say [‘????’] is not expensive?”

Because I would have been told that Sophie, in all her wisdom, has never been wrong. She possesses an internal expenditure radar whose bling-bling-bling-bling identifies incoming deals of a lifetime.

So we (meaning I) connect the three sections, including the attached miniature white lights, stand the tree up in the corner of the dining room, pull down the plastic branches, and plug in the lights.

You know how, on the Fourth of July, it takes a couple of seconds for the exploding firework to reach your ears? It takes about that long for the lights to blink on, as if they have to work up to it, nudge each other out of sleep.

But seeing how we paid an incredibly low price for the tree, why should I expect the lights to be hundred-yard-dashers when I should expect holiday Turkey-Trotters?

And I must confess, they’re spaced out among the bristly, synthetic, jade branches with a precision I could never muster. My strings of lights, after circling a $175 blue spruce, looked like the earth at night from the International Space Station, a few random cities among a black background of prairie, cornfields, mountain ranges, and Amazon warehouses.

I’m not sure if we’re going to decorate the tree with ornaments. I mean, how would an organic Santa, constructed from authentic plywood, feel when hanging from a faux bough?

Would red-nosed Rudolph ever be able to face his eight brethren and guide their sleigh after grazing for a month on branches of polyvinyl chloride?

Worst of all, how would baby Jesus feel in His manger if, looking up, he saw no star or stable, but a built-by-number big-box-store arboreal knockoff?

Heaven forbid.

• Rick Holinger’s new chapbook of poetry, “Down from the Sycamores,” is available at finishinglinepress.com. A multiple Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions 2025 nominee, his work has been published in Hobart, Chautauqua, Southern Indiana Review and elsewhere. His book of poetry, “North of Crivitz,” and collection of essays, “Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences,” are available at local bookstores and Amazon. Contact him at editorial@kcchronicle.com.