The Christmas Tree from Hell

Dear Boo and Bubble,

Ahhhhh…..it’s Christmas….that most wonderful time of the year…..with a crisp chill in the air; pep in people’s steps; constant caroling on all of the radio station unless you have Sirius; decorations on every available surface in every room of the house, including the bathrooms; delicious smells coming from the kitchen where cookies sit on cooling racks begging to be tested before they are given to neighbors; and an off-limits wrapping room where snipped sales tags lie scattered on the floor amongst a litter of useless too-small bits of paper and ribbon waiting to be vacuumed up before company arrives.  A time when family traditions rush to the forefront -  like finding your stocking at the foot of your bed when you wake up on Christmas morning contributed by Captain - or the more aggravating one of having to open presents one at a time, rather than diving in all at once, just to “make Christmas last longer,” which came from my side of things. 

And traditions that abound around the dinner table – a certain recipe for dressing that’s been committed to memory by its use for as long as I can remember spanning two generations and will continue as long as Jiffy cornmeal mix exists; the toss-up between asparagus and green bean casserole sometimes settled only by the compromise of having them both; the tedious preparation of fresh ambrosia with carefully separated sections of grapefruit and oranges sprinkled with a dust of coconut; freshly baked and flaky croissants; and dessert – what will it be – carrot cake, apple pie, coconut cake, pecan pie, pumpkin pie – maybe all of them? Oh, why not! 

Without a doubt, though, the granddaddy of all traditions….the one around which most all of Christmas revolves is the Christmas tree – that stately natural statue gracing the most significant place in the house filled with fragrant, green bundles of branches stretching wide at the bottom with fingers outstretched begging for the placement of an ornament and spiraling upward in beautiful, symmetrical digression to a perfect point awaiting an angel or a star as the appropriate crown to its glory.  The protector of the precious presents underneath…….Mother Nature’s once-a-year museum of ornaments that tell a life’s story……a wooden Santa Claus painted red with the name of a kindergarten teacher; a rocking horse now with fraying mane bearing a child’s moniker; Peanuts characters captured in stained glass made while visiting Mamaw and Granddaddy; a ballerina forever pirouetting back and forth dangling by a fragile thread; a grandchild’s artwork not yet perfected, but a masterpiece all the same.

And so, because of the importance allotted to it, one of the most critical rituals of the season is always the selection of the Christmas tree.  For most of my life, I’ve been a city dweller and city dwellers – with no handy access to a patch of land on which trees grow – must make an annual trek to the tree lot (usually sponsored by Rotarians or Kiwanians or some such other worthwhile organization) to pick from its assortment the best of all options.  Most years, this seems to happen after dark when dad gets home from work and the only source of light at the lot comes from a string of light bulbs meagerly defining the perimeter which makes it very difficult to truly see the virtues of any tree. The initial and subsequently defining question in the search for a tree is “how much do you want to pay?”  The answer, whatever it might be, sends you on a search for either a red or blue or yellow ribbon depending upon the price code of the lot.  Perhaps the hardest part of the process is consensus….someone in the family inevitably becomes emotionally attached to a tree with some glaring deficiency which then makes intense negotiations necessary in order to be able to end the endeavor and go home.  As uninspiring as it is, it’s the system in which we city dwellers work and, for the most part, delivers a Christmas tree worthy of the responsibility of being such.

One year, however,……back when your mom and Aunt Bee were little…….our family had a deviation from this time-honored pattern.  They were both taking ballet at Calvert-Brodie Dance Studio in Columbia and when they came home from lessons in early December, a flier came home with them advertising an opportunity to “Come out to our farm and cut your very own Christmas tree!” …….just for the ballet students…..free…….with directions on how to get there…..chain saw provided, but please bring your own rope to tie the tree on top of the car.  We discussed it that night at dinner and decided it would be fun to do something different that year, make it an outing – and the "free" part really resonated.

The following Saturday, Captain found some rope that would work for tying the tree on top of the blue Jeep that we owned at the time and we piled into the car all excited about the adventure.  I read the directions to him as we drove out from Columbia about fifteen miles until we found the destination.  The owner of the property, a father of one of the other ballet dancers, greeted us as we pulled in.  After properly introducing ourselves, he invited us to make ourselves at home and spend as much time as we needed finding the perfect tree……just holler and let him know when he needed to bring the chainsaw.  We thanked him and started out into the field before us dotted with trees of various sizes, some sort of pine with longish needles, not a Cedar or a Frazier fir, but pretty…. definitely not planted to be harvested for commercial pursuits, but out there nonetheless. 

Funny thing about selecting a tree in the wild…..the size can be very deceptive.  We had brought no tape measure or any other instrument other than Captain’s height to determine an appropriate size for our den where we traditionally placed the tree.  As we tromped around the field, it proved hard to figure this out.  Finally, we spotted a rather smallish tree – at least in comparison to the others – and Captain raised his arm up to see just how high it might stretch and he decided it was about seven to eight feet tall which should be perfect as we would cut a little bit off the bottom for a solid trunk to fit into the holder plus giving me fresh greens to use for decorating my mantel and dining room table.  Captain whistled to the owner and he came running out with the chainsaw.  After cutting the tree, he helped Captain drag it to the car……it took both of them.

I guess we should have suspected a problem when they hoisted the tree on top of the Jeep.  Oh, it fit fine lengthwise……we just couldn’t see out of the windows on either side of the car.  “Not to worry,” said Captain.  “We’ll lop off what we need to when we get home.”

We all helped get the tree from the car and Captain opened up the gate to the fence on the side of the house to take it out back for the trimming. He struggled to get the tree through the gate.  Finally, with him pulling the top and the three of us pushing at the bottom, it grudgingly and in constipated fashion, moved with our efforts.  We navigated it onto the patio off of the den where Captain began to trim several bottom branches off with a hacksaw.  Satisfied that he had taken enough bulk out of the tree, he asked us to help get it inside through the sliding glass door leading into the den……a space not nearly as wide as the gate, mind you….but perhaps with Captain’s pruning, there wouldn’t be a problem.

The strategy was for Captain to step inside into the den and hold the trunk.  He would then pull it as we pushed the tree from the middle and top.  The branches should fold up nicely enough to get through the opening into the den.  Nice theory…..we pushed and pushed and he pulled and pulled …..with the threat of breaking down the patio door.  Finally, we made some headway and after resisting as long as it could, the tree thrust through and abruptly unfolded itself in the den. 

It was at this point that we could fully appreciate the size of our tree, which consumed the entire space of the room not dedicated to furniture.  There was nowhere to place it that wouldn’t block the view of the television or the flames of the fireplace….no place that would allow any conversation from one side of the room to the other.  We simply couldn’t have it in the den at all.  The only acceptable alternative (other than outside) was to set it up in the living room.  The issue then became how to get it there.  The tree was too voluminous to take through any interior doorway or down the hall.  We were left with the only alternative of pulling it back through the patio door and repeating the exercise at the sliding glass door leading from outdoors into the living room.  For the next half-hour, we toiled at the task. 

Since the living room wasn’t as large as the den, I realized I would have to take some furniture out and move other pieces around before we could raise the tree. The sliding glass door took up one whole wall of the room and if the tree covered it entirely, that was fine with me…...we didn’t need to go in and out that way.  At least we would have a place to put it and a nice place to gather on Christmas morning to open gifts.  That’s all that really mattered. 

Finally, we managed once again to get the tree through the limited opening of the door.  Captain secured its base into the holder while I held it upright.  We stood back and observed our handiwork.  The tree spilled halfway out into the living room, but in spite of that, it seemed fine.  I filled the holder with water and wrapped a large sheet under it as a tree skirt.  We spent the rest of the evening decorating and, with the switch on of the tree lights, toasted the official beginning of our holiday.

Over the days leading up to Christmas, I would wrap presents and stick them under the tree until one day the accumulation became large enough that the packages needed readjusting. When I reached down to move a couple of them, they wouldn’t budge.  Perplexed, I tried again to no avail.  I realized that they were completely stuck together……..in a glaze of sap that had slowly been dripping from each branch of the tree….like a clear glue that now held everything firmly together in one blob.  There wasn’t anything I could do.  If I plied the presents apart, the wrapping would tear.  I would just have to put any remaining gifts outside of the tree’s purview.....on the coffee and end tables...on the arms of the couches...somewhere safe.  Adding insult to injury, when I examined further, I found brown spots on my area rug in the middle of the living room.  The tree had decided to leave a permanent memento of sap for me to enjoy in the years to come.

Well...Christmas Day finally came and we made it through in fine form in spite of the challenges the tree presented.  However, I did depart from one firmly held tradition that year....the tree found itself out on the street way before New Year’s Day…..I had to balance the risks of bad luck against the sap ruining everything in the living room.  We also learned a very valuable lesson...usually you get what you pay for.  And…..until recently when Captain and I moved to the mountains of North Carolina where Frazier fir Christmas tree farms abound, we never ventured out to cut a fresh tree again.  Sometimes it's just better to go to the lot like city dwellers are supposed to!