After three hours of wandering around, I finally found the one — the perfect Christmas tree that we would bring home.

It was Thanksgiving break 2010, and my family was on our annual Christmas tree farm trip. Once I chose our tree, my dad sawed it down, loaded it on top of our van and drove it home.

We all helped unload the tree and relocate it to our living room, which soon became littered with pine needles and filled with a fresh pine scent. Blasting Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas” over the speakers, my sister and I danced and sang while hanging ornaments on our tree.

Suddenly, my older sister Sabrina interrupted the joyous tunes with a huge “ACHOO!” Startled, I jumped at the sound of the sneeze, and she smiled back at me, sniffling and rubbing her red eyes.

“ACHOO!” There she went again. At the first signs of her allergies, she ran to take antihistamines from the medicine cabinet, but unfortunately, Claritin Clear didn’t help much.

She had always been allergic to trees and grass, but maybe it was the type of fir tree that we picked that year that made her allergies so bad. For the next few days, Sabrina’s eyes were permanently red, her nose was always sniffling and her sneezes echoed throughout the house.

On the fifth day of having our tree, my mom, seeing her miserable battle with the pine scent, decided we had to move the tree out.

My sister and I watched my mom and dad pick the tree up from its base, shuffle it out the door and set it in our front courtyard.

And there the tree stayed, fully decorated and surrounded by Christmas lights, for all the neighbors and passersby to admire. In the end, sniffles and sneezes couldn’t dim my family’s holiday spirit; in fact, we probably made Santa’s job a whole lot easier. After all, he didn’t have to climb down the chimney to place our presents under the tree.