A CHRISTMAS TREASURE HUNT

Dad raised himself from 'his' end of the couch, took his large and empty iced tea glass off the coaster on the side table, and walked to the kitchen.  "It's time to get the Christmas tree" , he said.  Mom went to the coat closet near the front door, while the three of us kids scrambled to get the 'best' seat in the car (a window seat. Nobody liked to sit in the middle on the 'hump'.)

Once in the old Chevy station wagon, we waited for Dad and Mom.  Dad slid into the driver's seat, with Mom as co-pilot. He backed out of the driveway and turned right, heading toward Cedar Street. We were 'off' on our yearly 'treasure hunt' in the Northwest Woods area.

Back then, in the 1950's, the woods in that area was quite thick.  Most of the trees were Oaks, but there were many White Pines and Cedar trees that self-seeded, as is quite often the way of Nature.  Dad would scan the trees as we all had something to say about the ones we were inspecting.  Eventually a decision was made, and Dad wielded his hand saw, and felled the tree. Then it was loaded on to the roof of the car, and tied down.  

Once home, the tree was placed in a bucket of water and left outside until the day, usually a week before Christmas, when it would be brought into the house for decorating.  That was a fun day!  Dad would make a fresh cut to the bottom of the  trunk, trim off the lower branches, and sometimes he had to chisel down the width of the trunk in order to fit it into the green metal stand with the four red legs.

Then the tree would be placed in front of the wide picture window in the living room.  Dad would fight with the strings of  lights, sometimes as he did, the words we heard shouldn't have been heard! We kids went through the boxes of mercury ornaments, choosing our favorites. 

 When the lights were finally untangled and wound around the circumference of the tree, we were given the word that we could begin hanging the balls of red, green, silver and gold on the branches. If we'd chosen a 'Charlie Brown' type of Pine tree, the needles were long and the branches rather flimsy.  They bent beneath even the lightest of decorations.   If it was a Cedar tree, the dense nature of it prevented ornaments from being hung anywhere but on the outside of the branches.  After all the decorations were on, including the strings of aluminum 'icicles', the spire was added to the top and the tree lights were plugged in and turned on!

No matter what the tree looked like in the woods, it was a special treat with a new look once it was in our front window. It mattered not that it was a drooping Pine with sparse branching. We didn't care if it was a dark, full Cedar. It was OUR Christmas tree...and it was special.  It smelled wonderfully fragrant. It glowed in the room. It sheltered the gifts to and from loved ones beneath it, and it did it's job well. 

No matter how often the tree was given water in its stand, it dropped needles all the way through New Year's Day when we took it down again. Mom or I vacuumed the droppings, and the needles always emitted their fragrance as the warm air from the vacuum was exhausting.  The icicles were vacuumed up too, as well as they could be. They were rather 'clingy' though, and would attach themselves to a sleeve or a sock or whatever came near to them.  Mom tried to salvage as many as possible when dismantling the tree, in order to save them for the next year, but we always lost some rebels who wanted to make an escape via the vacuum.

Christmas trees today are so different.  But that story will wait for another day.