The older I get, the more I reflect on Christmases past. Dylan Thomas wrote:
“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find.
“The Tree Farm” a Christmas song by Taylor Swift strums the chords of memories for me and the resounding strains summon images of “Fred’s Tree Farm.” I remember gearing up for a cold day, putting on my polar blue snowmobile suit with the gray furry trim around the hood. I slipped on the polka dotted Millbrook bread bags so my sneakers would slide easily into my black buckle boots, waddled out onto the porch, grabbed some fresh fallen snow to eat on my matted mittens and marched to the car that was coughing smoke from the tailpipe. Eight of us piled into our pea green wood paneled “73 Durable Plymouth Fury Station Wagon.”
Every year spent at the tree farm blends together whether it’s Buffalo or Cleveland. The sites were the same. We’re in the middle of nowhere in the country and the country jokes start. The snow on the ground is a blend of mud, hay and sleet as we pull up to the entrance. The smell of Kerosene mingles from a tractor with burning wood and the fire cracks as someone throws on another log. We meet the owner and helpers who bark out directions for choosing. “Blue ribbons at the top are spruce, orange are firs, red ones are white pines…” Smoke is billowing from a fire outside a barn in a big rusted barrel. Workers huddle to stay warm and wait for customers to make their purchases, and it looks like they’re drinking some form of toddy to get the blood moving any way they can. Red fingers are brittle and chafed as the man in the brown overalls pulls out a wad of cash to make change.
A tractor arrives from taking kids on a flatbed for a quick hay ride, as people descend, grabbing their trees.
“Don’t get any ideas,” said my dad, as we looked on excitedly. “It’s two bucks a person for a ride – That’s how they getcha… too expensive. It’s more fun walking anyway.” I guess so, we rationalize to ourselves, as we drag ourselves and mope out to the field on a quest to pick out the perfect tree.
I remember the biting cold as we peruse the options… “How’s this one?”
“Nope.”
“This?”
“Take it, it’s freezing,” we exchange quick glances of frustration at the indecision.
“Nope…”
“We’ll find it.” My mother had an eye for trees. She knew what we needed. About a half hour in the complaining starts and we find “the one.” Further examination and questions regarding its merit start to fly and dissipate in the gray sky.
We pull out the toothed saw and start to cut at the base. Time is a perplexing dilemma in the cold. It stands still and every action is met with an added effort ad nauseum. You cut and cut and it doesn’t seem to bite. The only bite taking root is on your nose from the cold. We hear the sound of chainsaws in the distance, and a thought arises that “wouldn’t it be easier?” But no one says a word, as we know dad likes to do it the “old fashioned way.” The tree breaks free from the cold ground. We carry it back, pay the guy, tie it to the hood and we’re off.
The car breaks down and we have to call some relatives or friends to rescue us. I swear this happened more than once and was met with the same callback line each time from my dad. “We’re not doing this next year. It’s not worth it.” But every year is the same and all is forgotten in tradition and we’ll make our way back.
Perspective in the cold sometimes has a tendency to warm your view. When we saw the tree out in the woods, it looked great. When we got it back home to trim it, all its flaws were in full view… Crooked trunk, bare sections, smaller than we thought, sometimes we thought it was something it wasn’t, but we made it our own. One by one the traditional decorations went on marking the family history. In the early days tinsel garland and tinsel strips gave the tree a glistening look of consumer formed icicles. Maybe a small school project made of a chain connected through blue construction paper. Bold bulbs of primary colors, red, green, blue and yellow intermingled with small ones twinkling throughout.
I don’t have an ornament for the tree farm memory, but I guess each tree was in and of itself an ornamental memory that served the purpose of representing something bigger.
Our trees are the stories we tell the world. Symbolically speaking, a Christmas tree is indicative of the tree of life, the second tree in the garden of Eden not far off from the “Tree of Wisdom.” It is the tree that bears the fruits of a life well lived and memories being the decoration. By the end of your life, you’ve formed your own artistic version of your life and Illuminated nature in your own way. Dotted memories highlight what is, what was and what is meant to be; an ornament bought on a trip, a handprint of a child, a photo embedded in a bulbous capsule, a homemade star marking an accomplishment.
The ornaments given from my parents are hidden away in a box or the sentimental ones have been given away to bridge new memories for families forming. Those times cutting down those trees means more now, and I smile and reflect on the effort. We brought nature into the home and decorated it with memories. Nature illumined for all to see.
spirit beat 