I can't remember anything about how this story came to be, but it is one of my favorites.

The Tommy Christmas tree Scandal

By Chad Smalt

Have you heard of the "Here's Tommy" Christmas tree scandal? No? Hmm well it is quite an issue. You should be aware of this. It seems that Tommy, of "Here's Tommy Christmas tree and decoration Farm,” has been caught grafting the more traditional, Pine Christmas tree, with a Douglas fir. This would lead most to conclude that it would be called a "Pinelas Christmas fur" or something like that. The problem is that Tommy neglected to tell any one of his customers about this. What people thought was a beautiful Christmas Pine, was in fact a freak of un-holy nature. Why would Tommy do such a thing? Who knows, the motivations of Tommy are weak and sketchy. It seems that when Tommy was young, relatively speaking, he found that he could garner attention by dancing. All he knew was a "jig" his Grandfather had tried, and failed, to show him shortly before he died. Basically Tommy would flail his arms and legs around while jumping and tumbling all at once. (This is the best description any of his family members, or other witnesses could come up with.) He would end his dance by falling down on the floor with a loud thud! and then play dead. (Just as Grandpa had shown him.) All of his family loved this routine, and it quickly became a staple at every birthday, Christmas, Funeral, or picnic.

Having been too afraid of the hospital to visit her Grandpa, Tommy's older sister, Vicki, was unable to dance, and therefore was unable to get much attention. Compared to Tommy, Vicky was nearly invisible to her family, and mostly seen as a nuisance. After a few harmful actions directed at Tommy, she settled on becoming his "manager". She was now the one behind the scenes, making it all happen—or so she thought. However, there was really little for her to do, since Tommy's dance was perfect from day one, and never faltered. She was his announcer actually, before any of his performances; she would loudly proclaim... “Here's Tommy!"

This, obviously, is where Tommy later got the name for his Christmas store. As Tommy’s fame grew, he began, under the guidance of his sister, to expand his performances to other venues. After playing countless Christmas parties, Tommy noticed that everyone bought a tree, dragged it into there home and threw all types of fire hazards on it. (Tommy learned early on, never to question the practices of paying customers.) At some point it even dawned on Tommy that peoples of all religions, or no religion, bought these trees. Having a narrow mis-understanding of "market business", as Tommy called it; he concluded that 100% of the population bought Christmas trees. Of course it took him another eight years to get his store running, but he did do it.

So then why, that is still the question, did he try to pull this grafting prank on his customers? The short answer is Tommy is an idiot, but I'm sure you want to know exactly why, as do I. Tommy thought of himself as an intellectual, he wasn’t. He would randomly read something, usually a magazine, that looked "smart". This only happened at the Doctor's office, and only when he was injured enough to require surgery, otherwise he wouldn’t go. One of these times, he happened to pick up on an article about different plants being grafted together to improve the effectiveness of certain medicines. Combining the fact that Tommy threw himself on the floor thousands of times, and his knowledge of business, plus his ability to grow trees, the rest of the story is yours.

The question that remains is: Do you have an un-holy freak of nature, fire hazard, strewn with sentimental ornamental blasphemy in your home for Christmas?

Chances are you do. And Chances are its Tommy's fault.