“Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.” Winston Churchill
Our first Christmas tree was not quite a year after we were married. Finishing up my last year at U Mass, I bought our first small tree in Northampton and dragged it up the stairs to our third story walk up railroad apartment. Rita remembers still the sound of the needles rubbing against the narrow stair and hallway walls. We set it up in an alcove off the main hall of our apartment, the only space that had room for one. Our decorations were minimal; they later accrued over the many years-some homemade by our parents or children, some gifts, some bought one by one in small shops or fairs. We still break them out once a year.
Our habit has been to put a tree up later in the Advent season and leave it up past Epiphany. Too late, and we miss the piney smell through the run up to Christmas; too early, and it is a fire hazard by the end. A sadness overtakes me when I see Christmas trees put out for trash pickup on the twenty sixth like checking off a box, another season survived and behind us.
One of our early Christmases we were living on Mashnee Island on Cape Cod. We had little money, but decided we wanted a live tree that would get another chance the following spring. I took my pickup to Hog Island, state owned, uninhabited, and the site of a large navigational warning sign at the north end of Cape Cod Canal. The sand while frozen was easily broken, and I dug out a small pitch pine, usually called a scrub pine, Charlie Brown never had a sparser specimen. After cutting out a large root ball, I wrapped it in burlap and brought it home. We put it in a large steel washtub in the living room of our rented cottage, kept the tree watered, and hoped when we resettled it after Christmas, the pine would survive the midwinter thawing. When I checked it early in June back on Hog Island, it was green and supple.
“It still feels weird to spend money on Christmas trees. Back when Mom was alive, we’d go out “tree hunting.” That’s what she called it, anyway. I think other people might use the word “trespassing.” Jenny Han, Fire with Fire
The ten years we spent in Maine provided us with many memorable Christmas trees. When our two older children, Amy and Gabe, were still small, I would load them on a sled, put on my bear-paw snowshoes, and we would go tree hunting. We first cut on the five acres surrounding our first Mount Vernon house, and later found our trees on the hundred acres we bought with a friend in New Sharon. I preferred Balsam Fir, but once settled on a Canadian hemlock and only once on a Norway spruce. Neither one kept its needles long enough for our preferred elongated season; when we finally took them down, threadbare and forlorn, we had a lot of sweeping and vacuuming to do.
Many years the highest temperature of tree harvesting day would remain resolutely in single digits, but bundled up with big mittens, the kids would complain only if I trudged too deep into the woods and took too long in our quest for the perfect tree. Tree cutting was always followed by hot chocolate back by the wood stove. Decorating was done in stages after we’d get the tree up: a couple of days with the tree in its natural state of beauty, the scent filling the house. The tree would draw up large amounts of our doctored water, feeding and bringing it back to life until the branches fell to their accustomed levels. Next came a day or two of just lights, then another day or two of our favorite decorations and candy canes, and finally the addition of strung together popcorn or cranberries. We eschewed tinsel of any kind, preferring to leave the tree unconcealed, not hidden behind manufactured glittery shininess. The evergreen foreshadows life eternal, renewed each day and year.
“I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year.” Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Papa Jack hanging Christmas lights in our first house in Maine
One of my most enduring memories of Christmas was our second in our first house in Mount Vernon. That year’s tree was a monster, rising almost to the cathedral ceiling in our dining room, a full twelve feet. I had cut a large Balsam fir. We used the lower branches for other decorations and the eight-inch trunk of the tree was used in the spring to help construct the pole barn woodshed I built. But the top twelve feet somehow were pushed through the front door and stood upright against the window.
My folks came up for a pre-Christmas visit. A half a dozen years prior to my father’s passing, he remained a vigorous sixty, and my mother still an Irish beauty. As was their custom with little room in our small converted barn, they preferred to rent a room in nearby Mrs. Hall’s bed and breakfast and not climb a ladder into one of our sleeping lofts.
We celebrated my mother’s birthday on St. Nicolas Day. She had begun work on the hand painted ceramic Nativity set that still adorns our Christmas celebrations. The first year brought us Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus. Eventually there was the full panoply of kings, shepherd, sheep, camels and a cow. She made several figures every year as Christmas gifts. Each year we carefully unwrap them from their newspaper protectors and set them out again in a central spot in our home. The carefully made wood manger itself was designed and crafted by Rita’s father, Dave, a skilled woodworker and furniture maker. The combination of the two – figures and crèche are treasured and a symbol to us of the permanent marriage of our two families.
That year after overcoming Rita’s objections to the giant tree and the extra sets of lights, in the end, our perfect Balsam fir is an indelible remembrance. After we got it in the house with much effort, trying to save as many needles as possible in the narrow entryway, my father insisted on climbing the ladder and helping with the decorating up high, including the angel at the top. I will not forget him doing this while Christmas persists in our hearts.
“…freshly cut Christmas trees smelling of stars and snow and pine resin – inhale deeply and fill your soul with wintry night…” John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
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