O Christmas Tree

     I walked out to the parking lot at Wal-Mart yesterday through their Christmas tree lot. They had about nineteen trees, three of which were standing upright, and there was no pine smell! I went over to one of the trees wrapped up in netting and sniffed it and…nothing. I don’t know what was up with that. I’m sure they were real because there were needles on the ground but, nothing!
     When you buy a “real” Christmas tree part of what you are buying is the smell. Our first Christmas tree cost the grand sum of seventy-nine cents and was about two feet tall. This was a good size for our student-housing apartment in college since it was the size of a bread box. And besides, we were going to be gone the whole Christmas break but we just couldn’t resist having a Christmas tree that first year we were married.

     We bought two boxes of little ornaments that were, I think, thirty-nine cents a box and dumped my brush rollers out of the bucket I kept them in….(what, you don’t know what brush rollers are?  Those instruments of torture like little porcupine logs women used to put in their hair at night and try to sleep with them sticking into their scalps so they would be beautiful in the morning but who could be beautiful with no sleep?  Do I have to tell you everything??)…Anyway, we dumped the curlers out of the bucket, set the tree stem, I mean trunk, in it and filled it with rocks and it made a pretty good tree stand. We were college students. They innovate. The teeny ornaments, the last one of which is on our tree today, made it one of the most beautiful trees we have had over the years.
     The next year when Dennis had graduated and we had real jobs we bought our first normal size Christmas tree and normal sized ornaments. Our angel looks like Carol Channing and is still on the kids’ tree. I made some lovely ornaments with little cork balls covered with sequins and beads threaded onto straight pins stuck  into the cork. Very chic.

     Tinsel back then was the aluminum kind that came in long strands and there were two schools of thought for applying it: laying it on strand by strand, the RIGHT way, which could take until Ground Hog's Day to finish the whole thing so usually the tree had tinsel about two-thirds of the way up. Or standing about three feet back from the tree and tossing it, which some people though was hilarious!  When we discovered those fat trees that don’t have room between the branches and the kind of tinsel that was like a furry aluminum rope you wound around the tree instead of hanging the silver strands it was quite a relief, I’ll tell you.
     Getting the tree home was another adventure unto itself.  The year we had a tiny Fiat convertible we drove it home in freezing sleet with the top down and the tree sticking up from the back seat. Usually it was crammed into the trunk of the car, the trunk tied down with rope borrowed from the tree lot guy, and we tried not to hit too many bumps. And then we had to get it into the house...wait! You’re supposed to saw some of the trunk off so it can absorb water...back outside, then into the house again, backing through the door so the branches don't all splay out on the door frame. Figure out which is the “good” side that will be facing the living room, and fit it into the tree stand.

     I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Dennis and I never fight. We did fight a lot before we were married. I guess we got it out of our systems then. But since we were married, we don’t. I have heard many times that if you don’t fight you don’t have a good marriage but that’s just the way it is.  We are never so adamant about something that it is worth hurting each others’ feelings and besides, when those guys who write the books about fighting have been married fifty years like we have and still want to be together, they can call me. Except---

     One time a year, when we would try to get the Christmas tree straight in the stand, something just came over us. Dennis would be lying on the ground twisting those pins into the trunk that are supposed to keep the tree up, I would be holding the tree and he would say “Move it over.” I would move it over. “No, I said over!”

     “I did move it over.”

     “The other way!  Not that much! Back the other way.”

     “Do it yourself then.” But, of course it took two people. And it went on until the thing was as straight as it was going to get and we were exhausted and soon the tree was beautiful again, at least in our eyes, and the annual fight was forgotten. 

      A real tree will give you pine needles in the carpet till Easter no matter how carefully you choose at the tree lot. I’ll tell you why. Unless you go out and chop it down yourself it is likely that your “fresh” tree was cut down in August. Really, August! I’m not making this up. I used to work for a railroad and typed up bills of lading for the trains bringing in the trees and they started shipping them in August. So you have to keep it watered really well and check it each day in case the tree was really thirsty that day or the dog has found it a convenient water bowl. 

     It’s been a few years now that we have had an artificial tree. The cost of the real ones just went through the roof and this one has paid for itself by now and it is really very pretty and we don’t have to go out in the freezing cold wandering through tree lots looking for one we both think is perfect and there won’t be pine needles in the carpet after we take it out.

     But I think I’m going to go find another lot when I go out today and walk through and sniff the trees.  Surely there are some out there that still smell like Christmas.