There are at least a dozen stories about how this tradition came to be. They range from the sweet and simple to the ugly and vulgar. All, I suppose, have a breath of truth. Now, in our modern era, the tradition has taken on a life of its own, spanning holidays but coming into its own at Christmas.

          I am speaking of the Christmas tree.

          Believe me, I am not speaking ill of the Christmas tree. As a little boy, the Christmas tree ignited a feeling in me that cannot be explained. Money was always tight at our home. What gifts there were did not have the MADE IN USA label on them, like all my friends. Ours all said MADE IN Japan. I didn’t care. Made it seem exotic. But the tree always said CHRISTMAS! to me. A week before Christmas it was out to the woods to find just the right one. Chop it down. Tie it to the sled and pull it back. Dad would put the stand on it, twisting and turning the tree to hide the crooked trunk, then setting the wondrous, sweet smelling tree right where Mom wanted it. My mother and sisters would then start the decorating. I always wanted to join in, but our father always told me to sit down, that decorating the tree was women’s work. But it looked so fun! Then, when the tree was all decorated, it would get plugged in for about five minutes. We weren’t allowed more than that because those bulbs got so hot. Our mother or father would always tell a story about someone they had known who had left their tree on too long and it had caught fire and burned up all the presents. Was the story true? I don’t know. The names seemed to change every year. I do know that the tree wouldn’t get plugged in again until Christmas Eve then again on Christmas morning, just long enough to open presents. My father would sit and keep a wary eye on the tree, looking for smoke. So, maybe the story was true. It still amazes me that now our tree can stay on all night and be no hotter than it was when it was first plugged in.

          Christmas trees now are different. First, they are mostly artificial. How many of us have uttered the phrase, “I will never have an artificial tree in this house!” We love the smell, we love the going and getting a tree, we love the experience. What we don’t love is being barefoot in June and stepping on a needle. We don’t like the mess of taking it down and getting sap and needles and twigs and branches all over when you drag it across the floor. We don’t like trying to figure out how to lean the tree to hide that bend or how do we hide the bare spot. A real tree is nice for a short while. Then it becomes a headache. At some point, artificial becomes the order of the day.

          This affects how we decorate. Trees used to be coated with tinsel. Last night Marsha and I watched a Red Skelton Christmas special. (Yes, boys and girls, that is how Miss Marsha and Pastor watch TV. Red Skelton, Gilligan’s Island, My Favorite Martian. Anyway…..) The tree in the living room on that special looked like a rocket ready to blast off. So much glorious tinsel! Now, however, you don’t put tinsel on artificial trees. Way to hard to take it off before you put the tree away. Year old tinsel just looks sloppy. As a boy, we would cut the branches all off with the tinsel still on them, burn the branches and tinsel and everything and then cut the trunk up into small pieces that would get thrown into the fireplace one at a time to get that pine log popping and smell. Now, you take off the decorations, take the tree apart and pack it all away till next year. The only person I know in recent times who has tinsel on his artificial tree is the organist from our church in Ohio. He had a Christmas room that faced the road in his place. A bachelor, he had put his silver artificial tree up years ago in that room. He decorated it the way he wanted it decorated, tinsel and all, put it in the window and closed the curtains. Come Christmas time, he would dust it off and open the curtains for all the world to see. I thought it was a great idea. Marsha did not. And I had to hear about it all season, since he lived across the road from my mother. Still, I thought it was brilliant.

          Now, we don’t just decorate the tree, the tree is the decoration. How many homes have just one tree anymore? There is the ‘big’ tree, which may not be the biggest, but it is the one around which presents are placed. There is the theme tree, which doesn’t necessarily have traditional decorations. It has a theme. Then, there are the trees that are placed because that particular square yard of floor space is virtually begging for a tree! We will call these accent trees. An accent tree can go anywhere for any reason. Usually not decorated except for lights, the accent tree gives off a pleasant glow on a cold winter’s night. Or, on a hot and muggy Florida or Texas night. The accent tree can be decorated, though. After all, when there are thousands of decorations in dozens of boxes, they have to hang somewhere. We can do this because we have gone artificial. We can pack a whole forest into our homes and, come that first weekend in January, make it all disappear into boxes.

          Like most men, I just don’t understand. And, like most men, I do all I can do to make my wife tree happy. Around Halloween time we were in Sam’s Club and the wife said, “Oh, look! The have their trees up!” Of course they do. “Let’s go look!” So, we start looking for a tree. Now, we have a ‘big’ tree, that really isn’t very big. It was bought a few years ago for our little ‘down sizing’ house. It is getting a little old and tired looking, so I figured that we were looking to replace that one. As you would expect, I was wrong. What we were looking for was a tree for the kitchen. “What!? A tree for the KITCHEN!!??? WHY?” First rule of Christmas tree etiquette: Do not, under any circumstances, question the wife. A cold glance thrown my way. “I think I will look when I am out by myself.” Sigh. I have failed at the 2017 effort to make the wife ‘tree happy.’

          It is not always a bad thing, though. One year, Marsha got the wonderful idea of making a theme tree with the theme of candy. Most trees will have a few candy canes, but Marsha’s theme was real candy. She got the idea while studying a box of those little chocolate covered marshmallow Santas. The perfect ornament and, as a bonus, one of the few candies I love! Our son was in high school and he, like me, didn’t really go for candy. But he does love the chocolate filled gold coins. So, Marsha decorated the theme with chocolate covered marshmallow Santas and little mesh bash bags of chocolate filled gold coins and, of course, the obligatory candy canes. It was highly suspicious, but the Santas and coins began to disappear. (The candy canes survived. I think we still use them.) Marsha had to go out and buy more. Several times. Where could all this be going, she wondered. Adam insisted it was mice. I felt it was more likely a squirrel that had gotten in or perhaps the monkey that had been terrorizing the neighborhood that Spring, Summer and Fall. Either way, her husband and son assured her that it was Christmas and on Christmas, aren’t we suppose to be forgiving to those less fortunate? Just for the record, we saw more of her brother Joe that year and he lived three hours away at the time.

          Memories of Christmas trees are the fun Christmas memories for me. When I was growing up we had decorated the tree and it was plugged in for those precious five minutes. We didn’t know that Dusty, the cat, had already climbed up the tree, found her branch and had fallen asleep. When the lights went on there was a startled cat howl and Dusty shot out of the top of tree with enough force to make the whole thing fly over backward. Marsha’s first Christmas with my family (we were dating) also featured a falling tree, this time knocked over by my mother. Christmas morning, when our son was eight, he came into the living room and saw his new bike. Excited, he sprinted across the floor and did a flying mount onto the bike. Bicycles are not made to be mounted that way, from the side at speed, and he went right into the tree. A real tree with lots of tinsel, it went over. We pulled him out and set the tree up. The tinsel was now laying sideways on the tree, like it was in a high wind. We left it like that for the rest of the season. For many years the artificial trees had to be built by putting the longest pieces on the bottom and building up. I saw a demonstration on putting the lights on the tree as you built it. That way you could run the lights down each branch, around the trunk and up the next branch. Our seven footer that year took over nine hundred lights to light and it really was awesome. Took hours, but I felt it was worth it. It became a chore, though, when my mother, Marsha’s mother and my sister all wanted me to light their trees the next year and Marsha wanted a bigger tree with more lights. In fact, I think that started the theme tree thing for us. Another tree to light. When we were in seminary there was a young town guy who became friends with us. He decided that a little feller like our two year old son needed a big tree. What he brought over had a huge base and took up half our living room. Biggest tree we ever had. When I finally dragged it outside and set a match to it, the thing went up like it had high octane racing fuel on it.

          All are good memories, but I have always felt that if Marsha were to be gone from my life, I wouldn’t have a tree. Nothing against trees, really. Just a Christmas tree is about family. Each ornament has a story, and Marsha remembers them all. If I did have a tree I would have to get a cat to make it interesting, and no tree would be worth getting a cat.

          So, if you haven’t already, put up that tree!