I’ve got the scissors, the twine and the garbage bags. It’s time to buy a Christmas tree.

Unlike the idyllic Hallmark movie moments, Christmas tree shopping is usually a tense and messy afternoon.

It doesn’t matter where you go, the tree lot is a precarious scene. Lopsided trees threaten to topple. Shoppers fling away unwanted trees as they try to clear a path for themselves. Successful customers navigate the crowded aisles back to the checkout stand with their field of vision obscured by massive noble fir.

Our family negotiates the chaos to find the area with trees that fit our living room and budget. Then we start the tedious process of wrestling a tree from the masses, cutting the strings that bind it, shaking it (to check for needle loss) and inspecting the branches (to avoid bringing home a tree with a bird’s nest, again). Then we repeat and repeat and repeat until we find The One.

Then I second-guess. What if it’s not The One? What if there’s an even better tree in the next bundle? I think I see a really green one on the bottom of the pile.

After assessing several more trees, that one we looked at 20 minutes ago doesn’t seem so bad anymore. We can just place the bare side to the wall and fill in that gap in the branches with a few extra ornaments.

The tree is bound in netting, but this does little to restrain the sprawling branches and protect the interior of the car from sap and needles, so we tie up loose bits and slip it into a garbage bag or two before awkwardly seat-belting the tree in for the car ride home.

The afternoon leaves us with sticky hands and slightly wilted Christmas spirits. And yet the holiday season would be incomplete without the fresh tree and pine scent greeting me each morning and welcoming me home each night.

And though this quest for the perfect tree marks the start of the holiday season, when I look back on my own childhood, the most memorable Christmases came from the most disastrous tree experiences.

There was the year the trunk of our tree was so askew, it would not stay standing. After the tree toppled one afternoon, creating a huge mess of water and broken ornaments, we ended up using thick, ugly twine to tie it to the cabinet behind it to keep it upright.

Then there was the year the Christmas tree died in mid-December. It wasn’t just starting to brown, it was nearly needle-free. We undecorated the dead tree, tossed it to the curb, bought a new tree and redecorated for a doubly festive holiday.

The thing I need to remember is that the icicles will never hang perfectly. The lights will never all light up. But the funny stories told year after year are born from the catastrophes. And in my slightly hazy memory that makes them all movie-ready Christmases.

“She Speaks” is a weekly column by women writers of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.