Sometimes I look back over my life in series of things. Jobs I’ve had (17), schools where I’ve been a student or a teacher (15), cars I’ve had (11), pets (23). At my age, I’ve had many, many more Christmas trees (OK, over 50), but the last one is stored in a box and has lasted 6 years.
When I was young and my Dad was alive, I remember the absolute awe of laying on the couch in the dark and admiring the big colored lights and tinsel icicles. Of course my mother continued the tradition after my Dad died, so we went out every year to a Christmas tree lot and picked one out, one tiny woman and two small children taking it home and wrestling it into the stand, trying to turn the screws that held it in place exactly the same number of turns so it wouldn’t topple over the minute we tried to set it upright. Happened once, but not right away. It was shortly after we had filled the TINY bowl with water and an aspirin to make it last longer (Does that work?). At least it didn’t have all of our treasures on it.
When I was a teenager, flocked trees became all the rage. Everyone had to have that fake snow! Initially, the flocking came in a spray can and you applied it yourself. The following year, you could buy them professionally flocked, and they looked like they had been in a heavy snowstorm with three inches of accumulation. But the year I flocked my Mom’s tree with the spray snow, even though I took the precaution of spraying in the carport, I gave myself asthma and nearly died. I never had another asthma attack before or since then, so it was a high price to pay for that white whatever-it-was. To set it off, we bought the spotlight with the 4-color gel wheel that spun slowly in front of the light, changing the beauty of the snow from red to blue to yellow to green. I wondered why we wanted the ‘natural’ look of the snow-covered tree, only to make the snow appear in completely unnatural colors. It was, again, hypnotic from the couch.
When I got out on my own, my brother and I shared an apartment in Denver. We had fabulous parties, and the first Christmas figured out that the few ornaments we had been able to wrestle away from Mom would not do a whole tree. It was the first year for the tiny lights and they only came in white, so we did an oh-so-fashionable silver and red ornament theme with them. As it was a party for a bunch of twentysomethings, many of the ornaments ended up on the guests in creative places. I still have some, though, and think about that party every year when I put them on. The tree.
In Santa Fe there are pinon trees aplenty, and they are just the right size and shape to be a Christmas tree. I married an outlaw builder, who had hewn a domed cabin out of rock and chainsawed timbers alone. I finally had someone who could manage cutting a tree in the wild, but he’s Jewish and not that into it. I still can’t use a chainsaw, they seem to me like giant and even more malevolent versions of garbage disposals, which I worry (unreasonably, I know, but that doesn’t stop it) can somehow spring to life unswitched, suck my hand down in there and cut off my fingers. You can imagine the bloodbath in my mind at the thought of a chainsaw taking after my femoral artery.
I have to give a shout-out here to the desert, the best New Mexico tree I ever saw was a pile of gold spray-painted tumbleweeds, stacked up into the corner of a room so that they assumed the shape of a Christmas tree and were then decorated.
When my children came along, I insisted that we at least establish the tradition of the tree lot, as opposed to an artificial tree, and fill the house with that great tree smell that lasts for, oh, 2 days, at which point the needles start to drop and embed into the carpet. Somehow I was never able to pass on my own teenage job of the vacuuming and tweezing of the needles after Christmas to either of my boys. They feigned inability to see them.
One year, I casually asked, “What would you guys think if we got an artificial tree?” They didn’t care. THEY DIDN’T CARE!! In fact, they thought it would be a good idea. All those years…
So I bought a cheap fake tree, one that would fit into a box that could fit through the 2’X3’ attic door. That limited it to about a 5’ tree. We had to put it up on a chest every year to give it enough height to keep it from looking pitiful. Majestic, it’s not. But when it comes down, it’s done. No carpet tweezing. I’ll have to say that although I was a little nostalgic for the old at the beginning of the new tradition, I have learned to like it for its expedience and predictability. It’s all about the ornaments now anyway. The ones from my childhood, when my Dad was alive, the ones with a little flocking still on them from my Mom’s, the ones from the great party in Denver, and the ones that my kids made in grade school, brought out every year and put right in the middle on the good side. The popsicle stick frames with their school picture glued in, the construction paper Rudolph, the star with Oh Holey Night on it.
Now, one is gone and out on his own but without a family yet, so he is still part of our tree tradition. The other is still with us but not for long dangit, a giant lumbering teenager. We have gotten free of the suburb and moved out into the hill country. Of course, now they say that what they would really like is a real tree, maybe one we could cut down. As though they can’t remember ever having a real tree, or griping about having to get prickled climbing underneath the branches to add water and an aspirin to the bowl. I think I’ll just give them the chain saw and let them have at it.
Reba, thanks for this. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it
Thank you, Joyce, and happy tree memories to you!
Reba
As a twentysomething who, this year, is on her sixth tree since adulthood, I still classify and remember the years by whether or not I put up a tree. Many times, the years that were skipped were because of some turmoil or upheavel (moving).
I, too, thoroughly enjoyed both your post and writing style. Thanks for sharing some memories.