So, every year after Thanksgiving my family purchases a Christmas tree. Even though we have a fake one, and my mother swears every year that we’re going to use it, she still ends up coming home with a real tree. Which is great, because I am completely against fake trees (they’re fake!).

And every year, we decorate the tree. Even though I am against fake trees, I still find decorating the real one to be an incredibly huge hassle and my Mom has to prod me incessantly until I actually start putting up the decorations. There are a few types of decorations that we use every year for our family Christmas tree, but the two most prominent in my mind are the wooden rocking horses (my Mom collects rocking horses – we even have a life size wooden carousel-style rocking horse named Rose Red) and the apples.

The apples are so convincing to look at that despite their foamy core, my younger brother took a bite out of one. We were babies at the time, of course, but to this day every time we decorate the tree my Mom has to point out the apple that Alex bit.

Today, I was sitting in a booth at the local greasy spoon hamburg place that has a bizarre western style interior with all the old and vintage junk that an Applebee’s restaurant designer could dream up, when I noticed that around my table was a garland of fake apples. And one of those apples had a bite in it, from a tiny mouth.

People always want to talk about how different cultures are, but I honestly see more similarities than differences living here. As I tell my friends – everything is different, but everything is the same.