The Christmas tree has dramatically changed in my lifetime, and I am not sure that this is a good thing. Understand, I am not running down 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. My father 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. Still, it looked like serioius 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 a 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 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 the bare spot. A real tree is nice for a short while. Then it becomes a headache. At some point, artificial became the order of the day.

         This affects how we decorate. Trees used to be coated with tinsel. A few years ago I watched a Red Skelton Christmas special. I know, exciting TV. 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, take that to the burn pile and burn all that. Then we would 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. No one else in my family did.

          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 a lot of men, I just don’t understand. In Sam’s Club one year, right around Halloween, there was this conversation; “Oh, look! The have their trees up!” The husband was not impressed. “Of course they do.” Kind of sarcastic. “Let’s go look!” The wife was excited. So, off to the artificial pine grove in Sam’s they went. The husband grudgingly said, “Yeah, we probably need to replace our old tree. It is looking rough.” The wife let out a disdainful grunt that said, without words, that her husband was a twit. “The living room tree is fine! This for another room!” The husband seemed a little confused. “Another room? What other room?” “I need tree for the kitchen.”  “WHAT!? A tree for the KITCHEN!!??? WHY?” She gave a withering look to her idiot husband. “Fine. I’ll look when I am out by myself.”

          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 bags of chocolate filled gold coins and, of course, the obligatory candy canes. It was highly suspicious, but the Santas and the coins began to disappear. (The candy canes survived. Odd.) 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. (A completely different story.) Either way, we assured her that it was Christmas and on Christmas, we are suppose to overlook a little excess.

          Memories of Christmas trees are the best Christmas memories for me. With a real tree, you had to set it up and leave it up with no decorations until all the branches settled in a natural way. Six to ten hours. One year when I was growing up, the tree had settled and the women had decorated the thing. My father plugged it 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 and 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. Seems like the memories that make me smile the most feature trees laying on the floor. I wonder if that says something about the way my brain works?

          I had 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. Now, a tree would just be a sad thing. BUT!!!!! This year I do have a small, white ceramic tree on my desk, thanks to Nancy Miller and Janene Dawes. Plugged in, it is quite pretty. Stop in and see it.

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